County: Roscommon Site name: CURRY AND CLOONACALTRY
Sites and Monuments Record No.: SMR 48:97 Licence number: 04E0626
Author: Charles Mount, Project Archaeologist, Irish Concrete Federation, 8 Newlands Business Park, Naas Road, Dublin 22.
Site type: Post-medieval field enclosure
Period/Dating: —
ITM: E 581485m, N 770639m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 53.685150, -8.280280
Archaeological assessment was carried out in Curry and Cloonacaltry townlands, Co. Roscommon, as part of the environmental assessment impact of a proposed quarry development by Roadstone Provinces Ltd. The purpose of the work was to test the preliminary dating of a complex of disused field boundaries within the 68ha area of the proposed development. Historical, cartographic (notably the 1636 Stafford survey of Roscommon) and artefact research, combined with newly commissioned aerial photographic survey and analysis of monument dating and distribution, contributed to the development of a hypothesis that the majority of the walls in the study area are 17th-century or later and that those in Cloonacaltry townland post-date 17th-century woodland clearance. A testing programme was formulated with the objective of retrieving evidence to test the hypothesis.
Excavations took place on 4-7 May 2004. Fifteen trenches were excavated at various points to investigate wall sections, wall junctions, and a number of enclosures of varying sizes. The testing results were negative; no archaeological features, apart from the walls themselves, and no artefactual material was recovered.
The original hypothesis has not been falsified. There is no material or historical evidence to date any of the field enclosures before the medieval period and most of the enclosures before the post-medieval period. A hoard of coins of Phillip II, Mary and Elizabeth I is the earliest dated find from the study area. The earliest monument from this part of the study area is a 16th/17th-century rectangular fortified house in Skeavally townland.
