County: Westmeath Site name: N4/N6 KINNEGAD TO KILCOCK MOTORWAY SCHEME
Sites and Monuments Record No.: N/A Licence number: 03E0803
Author: Donald Murphy, Archaeological Consultancy Services Ltd, Unit 21, Boyne Business Park, Greenhills, Drogheda, Co. Louth.
Site type: Various
Period/Dating: —
ITM: E 655219m, N 748093m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 53.479973, -7.168108
Monitoring of topsoil-stripping associated with the construction of the N4/N6 motorway scheme commenced on 10 July 2003. The motorway is the first in a series of Public Private Partnership Schemes devised by the National Roads Authority and commences at Crossanstown in Co. Westmeath, travels through counties Westmeath, Meath and Kildare and rejoins the existing M4 at Pitchfordstown, just outside Kilcock, Co. Kildare. The monitoring to be carried out represented Phase 3 in the overall archaeological evaluation of the route. Phase 1 consisted of the archaeological testing of the proposed route and commenced in January 2002 under the direction of Westmeath County Council. Phase 2 consisted of the full excavation of those sites identified through the Phase 1 testing. Phase 2 was completed by the end of 2002 and summary reports appeared in Excavations 2002. As a result of all the previous investigations, 29 areas of archaeological potential were identified as requiring monitoring during the topsoil-stripping operation, representing c. 20km of the 35km route length. Up to December 2003, over 16km out of the 20km to be monitored had been stripped of topsoil.
Monitoring continued during 2004 on the remaining 4km. By December only 100m of the scheme remained to be stripped. No sites were identified as a result of the monitoring. The remaining 100m strip will be monitored in early 2005.
