2004:1484 - TULSK, Roscommon

A preliminary excavation was carried out at Tulsk as part of the Discovery Programme’s Medieval Rural Settlement Project (2002–2008), which has begun to focus on north Roscommon as a location that may provide insight into Gaelic lordship in the period c. AD 1100–1650. The excavations in 2004 were on the site of an earthwork that is classified as a ringfort and rises as a low platfrom above the surrounding field. The fields in turn retain a series of at least four generations of relict boundaries that have dissolved into the present landscape. The site lies within the modern village, which is only noted in documentary sources from the 14th century and retains a fine ruined Dominican priory that was founded in the 15th century.

Prior to a preliminary season of excavation in 2004, the earthwork site and surrounding field area were subject to an intensive geophysical survey, which indicated a series of significant anomalies below the current surface. A six-week excavation programme opened two cuttings, one across a double-banked linear feature to the north-west of the site, the other on the mound itself. The first cutting did not shed significant light on the parallel bank feature per se, but below the banks a series of still earlier pit-like features was observed, and the fills have been sampled for palaeoenvironmental remains.

The main focus of the excavation was a 24m by 6m cutting on the top of the earthwork mound. The cutting was aligned to take advantage of surface anomalies identified during the initial survey, as well as significant resistivity anomalies indicated in the subsequent geophysical survey. Only the various surface levels have been removed so far (to a maximum of 1m, but at an average depth of 0.2m). Two primary features have been revealed. The latest construction within the cutting was an ovoid pile of loose unmortared stone chippings. This feature occupies a near-central location on the north edge of the site. It lies directly on top of a substantial mortared stone building that extends to the east side of the mound and down its slope. This rectangular building has a battered external wall and this is interpreted as the remains of a ruined keep.

The dating of these features is still not clear, although a plough pebble was recovered from a context that overlay the edge of the keep at the foot of the mound on its east side. Plough pebbles have been dated elsewhere in Ireland to the 13th century. A series of musket balls and 16th-century coinage may suggest a framework for the later horizons on the site. This would certainly be contemporary with the presence of Sir Richard Bingham in Tulsk in the 1590s. Bingham was Queen Elizabeth I’s Governor of Connaught, and it is recorded that he watched his troops from the ‘hill’ in Tulsk in 1593.

A longer season of excavation is planned for 2005 and it is hoped that such work will provide the opportunity to understand the later contexts on the site more fully, as well as delving a little more deeply to ascertain the presence of earlier levels.