County: Derry Site name: Gortin Manor Estate, Duncastle Road, New Buildings
Sites and Monuments Record No.: N/A Licence number: AE/06/144
Author: Louise Devlin, Gahan & Long Ltd, 7–9 Castlereagh Street, Belfast, BT5 4NE.
Site type: Enclosure, standing stone and megalithic structure
Period/Dating: —
ITM: E 641379m, N 911103m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 54.945899, -7.354138
It is proposed to construct a residential development at the Gortin Manor estate, Duncastle Road, New Buildings. The proposed development will consist of 157 houses with access roads, associated services and amenity areas. Under previous ownership, approximately two-thirds of the development area was monitored and the exposed remains resolved. This work was undertaken by Joseph Kovacik of ADS Ltd (Excavations 2005, No. 307, AE/05/90). During the course of our evaluation, a large enclosing ditch, two smaller linear ditches and three small areas of archaeological interest were identified and excavated. In all, fifteen features of an archaeological nature were identified on the site.
A large enclosing ditch was located on what had recently been known as a mound. It is probable that this is what is described in the Sites and Monuments Record as site LDY022–026, a circular cropmark c. 50m in diameter. The ditch had an average width of 3.4–3.7m and a maximum depth of 1.74m in the west to 1.41 in the north-east, close to the possible entrance. The ditch contained a piece of souterrain pottery, three metal artefacts and some struck and worked flint. There appeared to be a recut of the enclosing ditch, which extended for c. 45m starting at the north-east side of the enclosing ditch and continued to the entrance where, it was the sole cut for a maximum of 4m. This could be interpreted as the widening of the first enclosing ditch soon after it was completed.
A relatively straight linear ditch was also identified and was located c. 16m east of the large enclosing ditch. An irregular-shaped pit was located close to the west edge of the ditch approximately midway along. This appeared to cut a further linear feature.
A total of three small areas of possible archaeological features were also identified. The first area was located just west of the site entrance and contained a spread, a possible circular pit and three possible stake-holes. The second area was located 4m south of the south edge of the enclosing ditch and consisted of a spread and two small circular features. The third area was located 5.2m east of the north-east edge of the large enclosing ditch and contained a spread and two pits.
A topsoil-strip of the remainder of the site subsequently took place in June 2007; this excluded a large part of the internal area of the enclosure.
