County: Cork Site name: BALLINRUSH
Sites and Monuments Record No.: N/A Licence number: 05E1122
Author: Eamonn Cotter, Eachtra Archaeological Projects, Ballycurreen Industrial Estate, Kinsale Road, Cork.
Site type: Disused trackway
Period/Dating: —
ITM: E 581133m, N 606547m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 52.210373, -8.276058
Testing was undertaken on behalf of Cork County Council on the route of the N8 Fermoy–Mitchelstown bypass,which involves the construction of 16km of the N8 from Gortore, north of Fermoy, to Carrigane, north-east of Mitchelstown. The principal aim of this phase of the project was to test for any previously unknown sites by a programme of centre-line and offset testing and to test sites of archaeological potential identified in the EIS and geophysical survey.
A disused trackway (CHS 39) was identified in the EIS report in the townland of Ballinrush on the lands of Kilworth military camp. The trackway is c. 400m in length and extends in a south-westerly direction from the south-west corner of the camp to the Glencorra Stream. The first-edition 6-inch OS map shows several clusters of houses in the Ballinrush area, accessed by roads now long disused or disappeared. The present site is one such road, which accessed a cluster of houses on either side of the Glencorra Stream. Test-trenching across the trackway revealed it was 7.9m wide, bordered on each side by an earthen bank and with a surface of small stones.
