County: Down Site name: 648 SAINTFIELD ROAD, CARRYDUFF
Sites and Monuments Record No.: SMR 9:29 Licence number: AE/05/016
Author: Trevor Rice, Northern Archaeological Consultancy Ltd, 638 Springfield Road, Belfast, BT12 7DY.
Site type: Early Christian ringfort
Period/Dating: —
ITM: E 736752m, N 865787m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 54.522010, -5.887547
This badly damaged ringfort was in the south-west corner of the development area. The rath bank survived for some 20m only in the western and northern field boundaries, with the rest of the rath levelled by the farm and outbuildings, which had encroached upon it. As the rath was to be excluded from the development, a series of test-trenches were excavated to try to locate the remains of the bank or any surviving ditch. Some test-trenching had initially been carried out previously by Simon Large (AE/03/11) to establish a protection perimeter; the ditches uncovered were not excavated. With the demolition of the farm and the monitored topsoil-stripping of the rest of the development, it was decided that the full line of the rath defences should be exposed and two sections should be excavated across them.
The ditch in Section 1 (southern part of the rath) was 2m in width and 0.6m in depth, but in Section 2 the ditch was 1.4m in width by no more than 0.2 m in depth, suggesting massive truncation caused by the removed farmyard. The fill contained stones up to 0.7m in diameter, suggesting that the bank may have contained at least a proportion of large stones, possibly as some form of revetment.
