County: Westmeath Site name: SKEAHANAGH (SK1)
Sites and Monuments Record No.: N/A Licence number: 04E1098
Author: Laurence McGowan, for Cultural Resource Development Services Ltd.
Site type: House - 18th century
Period/Dating: Modern (AD 1750-AD 2000)
ITM: E 635024m, N 735029m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 53.364304, -7.473781
This work was undertaken as part of a programme of testing ahead of the proposed realignment of the N6 Dublin–Galway carriageway. The site is one of sixteen sites of potential identified during the compilation of an EIS. It is in the south-east corner of a field that is currently in pasture, at Chainage point 31,350m. The field encompasses a small hillock that overlooks the Kilbeggan section of the Grand Canal, which lies c. 100m to the west. The site is located on a level platform on the west-facing slope of this hillock at 84,005m OD.
The site consists of the area surrounding a small stone-built cottage and associated ruined outbuildings. The cottage is thought to have been constructed at the same time as this section of the Grand Canal in 1798. These remains will be demolished ahead of the construction of the road. Test-trenches were opened to the north and northwest of the house. No archaeological remains were uncovered. Instead several features associated with the house and its fall into ruin were uncovered across the area. A linear feature uncovered c. 9m from the eastern wall of the cottage represents the remains of a wall that originally enclosed the cottage and outbuildings. This wall has long since been robbed out, leaving a linear feature 1.3m wide that runs on a north-east/south-west orientation along the western side of the house and continues across the front of the house before coming to a halt at a pathway, which is still used for access to the surrounding fields today. The robbed-out wall trench had been backfilled using a mixture of natural subsoil, topsoil, chunks of mortar and render and pieces of yellow brick, suggesting that the house had already been ruined for some time when the wall was removed. In addition, a large amount of material that originally had been part of the fabric of the house, including a chimneystack, was contained within the topsoil horizon. The excavated trenches produced fragments of modern glass, slate and metal, together with the render and brickwork already alluded to.
27 Lindenwood Park, Foyle Springs, Derry
