County: Wicklow Site name: BROCKAGH: ‘St Kevin's Road’
Sites and Monuments Record No.: WI017-001 Licence number: 05E1261
Author: Conor McDermott, School of Archaeology, University College Dublin, Belfield, Dublin 4.
Site type: Road - road/trackway
Period/Dating: Early Medieval (AD 400-AD 1099)
ITM: E 708136m, N 699595m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 53.036088, -6.387629
At the request of the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government, UCD School of Archaeology conducted preliminary site investigations on a recently exposed portion of St Kevin’s Road, Co. Wicklow. The excavations were limited to a 7m by 4m cutting, and recording of deposits exposed in section at other locations.
The excavations confirmed that the exposed deposits form part of St Kevin’s Road and that it is present along the entire length of the area stripped by a mechanical excavator. The line and structure of the exposed road accords well with a survey of the site conducted by Paddy Healy in 1972 and the general form of the site as excavated by Michael Ryan and Patrick Wallace of the National Museum of Ireland further to the west in 1968 and 1972 (Excavations 1972, No. 33).
The foundation layers of the road were laid over a natural peat horizon that survived to a maximum depth of 0.14m. The peat was removed from some parts of the site prior to construction, exposing the glacially deposited orange/brown clay. The lowest construction layer formed a low bank of orange gravel running along the northern side of the site. This gravel was partially overlain by a layer of small, closely set cobblestones with some grey clay that extended across the west side of the cutting for 2.89m where it was set in the underlying peats and exposed natural gravels. The cobblestones were directly overlain by a layer of dark sandy gravel that was generally confined to the middle of the road at both eastern and western ends of the cutting and was up to 2.8m wide and 0.08m in depth. The road surface was composed of large flagstones on the eastern side of the cutting decreasing in size towards the western side. The stones were set in orange gravel and the two deposits represent a single construction layer. Prior to disturbance, the site appears to have been covered by 0.1–0.15m of peat.
St Kevin’s Road can be traced from Glendalough through the Wicklow Gap 900m to the north-west of the excavation, with an estimated length of 10.8km. The maximum recorded width of the site was 3.55m in the cutting, with a depth of 0.28m. There were indications of flanking ditches at other exposures along the road and at one location it runs through a low-lying basin where it is survives below 0.3m of peat. No artefacts or dating evidence were recovered and an early medieval date has been suggested.
