County: Down Site name: BALLYWILLWILL
Sites and Monuments Record No.: DOW036:025 Licence number: AE/05/118
Author: Emily Murray and Finbar McCormick, CHRONO Centre
Site type: Ringfort - rath
Period/Dating: Early Medieval (AD 400-AD 1099)
ITM: E 735102m, N 841543m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 54.304749, -5.924045
Ballywillwill rath 1 (‘Ballywillwill 1’) was excavated by Dudley Waterman and Pat Collins in 1951 (Waterman and Collins 1952). Almost the full width of the western ditch of the counterscarp ringfort was then excavated, but the bottom of the ditch was not reached due to water logging. Waterlogged conditions suggest a favourable environment for the preservation of organic matter and the likely presence of suitable dating material. The purpose of the reinvestigation of the site in 2005 (26–28 September) was to try and recover such organic material from the base of the ditch fill for radiocarbon dating as part of the CHRONO research project on ‘The chronology of Irish early medieval settlement: the origin and demise of the ringfort’. Ballywillwill 1 is a scheduled monument and consent to excavate at the site was given by the EHS, Built Heritage (B82/81).
A trench 2.4m long (east–west) by 1m was opened across the ditch and was positioned so as to continue the western extent of the 1951 cutting across the site. On removal of the fill the ditch was found to be flat-bottomed with a wide U-shaped section and c. 1–1.2m in depth. There was no evidence for any recutting and at no stage was lying water encountered. At the centre of the trench/ditch at a depth of c. 0.35m, there was a well-defined loose stone layer. These stones presumably derive from the stone revetment of either the inner or outer faces of the bank, traces of which were found in the earlier excavation (op. cit., 73). A compact waterlogged peaty layer with laminated leaves and grasses was found at the base of the ditch fill (c. 0.12–0.14m thick). Three samples, one from the bottom (UB-6675: 14C yrs BP 1630±35), middle (UB-6781: 14C yrs BP 1181±35) and top (UB-6676: 14C yrs BP 1171±32) of this deposit were submitted for radiocarbon (AMS) dating and gave calibrated age ranges (2 sigma) of cal AD 344–536, 770–967 and 774–903 respectively. No finds were recovered.
Reference
Waterman, D.M. and Collins, A.E.P. 1952 The excavation of two raths at Ballywillwill, Co. Down. Ulster Journal of Archaeology 15, 71–83.
School of Geography, Archaeology and Palaeoecology, Queen’s University, Belfast, BT7 1NN
