County: Meath Site name: GLEBE
Sites and Monuments Record No.: N/A Licence number: 05E0714
Author: Kieran Campbell
Site type: Excavation - miscellaneous
Period/Dating: Multi-period
ITM: E 671680m, N 751734m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 53.510699, -6.919331
Monitoring of topsoil-stripping for an estate of 30 houses took place in July 2005. The site is part of the small townland of Glebe, east of the village of Ballivor, on the south side of the R156 road leading to Rathmoylan. There are no known archaeological sites in the vicinity of the site. Glebe House, adjacent to the site on the west, is a two-storey three-bay house of late 18th- or early 19th-century appearance. In 1835–6 Glebe was the property of the Board of First Fruits and was held by the Reverend Mr Green, minister of the parish. The 1837 first-edition 6-inch OS map shows the development site as landscaped ground in front of Glebe House, with a subcircular plantation on a ridge of high ground. The field was in grass at the time of the monitoring.
Topsoil-stripping, by a D6 bulldozer and a mechanical excavator, uncovered the field ditches as shown on the 1837 and 1910 OS maps and decayed roots of the removed trees. A number of pits contained late 19th-/early 20th-century crockery and glass and dumps of oxidised soil with burnt limestone. The topsoil produced an English penny of Victoria, dated 1863, and a moderate quantity of bone and pottery of late 19th- and early 20th-century date, including many sherds of Mason’s Ironstone China, made by G.L. Ashworth & Bros (Ltd) of Hanley, Stoke-on-Trent.
A fragment of a granite rotary quern (diam. 520mm) was found among loose stones in a small quarry hole excavated into a natural hummock near the south-eastern corner of the townland, 180m beyond the southern limit of the development site. The quern had broken in antiquity across the central perforation, which has a diameter of 40–45mm.
6 St Ultan’s, Laytown, Co. Meath
