County: Kildare Site name: ARDMORE/BLACKWOOD/BOHERBAUN LOWER/ BOHERBAUN UPPER OR MONAPHEEBY/ CLOGORROW/CLANE/ CLONERBEG/KILEER/ LOUGHABOR/NEWTOWNBERT/ OLDCOURT/RATHCONNELL/RATH
Sites and Monuments Record No.: N/A Licence number: 05E0825
Author: Sinclair Turrell, ADS Ltd, Windsor House, 11 Fairview Strand, Dublin 3.
Site type: Peatland survey
Period/Dating: —
ITM: E 453854m, N 557388m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 51.749747, -10.116695
Kilberry Bog is located 6km north of Athy, west of the R417. This large bog is bordered by farmland to the east and by forestry to the south-west and north-west. There are areas of private bog on the northern, north-western, north-eastern and southern sides of the bog. The western edge is bordered by the railway line from Athy to Kildare. There is a densely wooded island, Derryvullagh Island, in the central area, with a smaller wooded island to the north-west of this. The bog covers an area of 978ha and forms part of the Bord na Móna Coolnamona group of works.
The bog consists of around 163 fields, running south-west/north-east, with an industrial railway running parallel to the fields from the works to the centre of the bog just north-east of the islands, where it turns to the south-west. The areas in production were located on the southern edge of the bog and on the western side, just north of the islands; the drain faces and field surfaces were in good condition. There was an area in the south-east corner that was being prepared for production. The drains here had been freshly cut by a mechanical excavator, but the field surfaces were heavily encrusted with excavated peat. The rest of the bog consisted either of areas that were out of production and heavily overgrown or worked-out areas, with shallow, gravel-bottomed, heavily silted drains and a great deal of natural wood, mostly pine, oak and birch.
The bog has had a long production history, the 1909 OS map showing a peat works in the same location as the current works, with a tramway leading out onto the bog. This works was concerned with the distillation of peat. There was formerly a farm on Derryvullagh Island and a track is marked on the 1909 map running south of the island to the edge of the bog. No traces of this track remain, but a Bord na Móna worker recalled that when he began working at Kilberry, some thirty years ago, older workers referred to ‘a line of stones’ that had existed south of the island.
No archaeological features were recorded during the survey of this bog.
