2006:438 - BALLYBOES, Donegal

During monitoring between 1 and 10 March 2005, the remains of four gun platforms, eight buttresses and a rectangular building were uncovered within the lower courtyard of the Martello tower at Ballyboes, Greencastle. The surviving walls of these structures consisted of shale blocks bonded with mortar. The gun platforms survived as four semicircular stone structures that were bounded to the south by a linear wall, which was parallel with the outer, shore, wall of the courtyard. Internally, the platforms were on average 3.2m north–south by 5m and had an average wall width of 0.9m. The platform walls had been badly disturbed in the recent past, with regular breaks in the walls and dumps of modern concrete typically found at the junction between them and the inner wall.

In addition, the OS map of the development area depicts two square-shaped buildings within the courtyard area of the Martello tower. Neither of these features remained standing but the foundations of the larger of the two were identified. This roughly rectangular building measured c. 6.5m north-east/south-west, with thick mortar and stone walls. The north and south walls had a width of 1.2m, while the east and west walls were 1.7m wide. To the west of this building there was a short length of wall, c. 3.5m long by 1.25m wide, and an associated red-brick culvert.

Monitoring of ground clearance within the remainder of the site revealed it to have been heavily truncated, to the extent that the survival of archaeological features would be minimal. Monitoring revealed no further evidence of archaeological features.

Editor’s note: Although this licence was issued during 2005, the report on the work was not received in time for inclusion in the bulletin of that year.

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