County: Down Site name: BALLYVARLEY (1)
Sites and Monuments Record No.: N/A Licence number: AE/06/149
Author: Norman Crothers, for ADS Ltd.
Site type: Field boundary
Period/Dating: Post Medieval (AD 1600-AD 1750)
ITM: E 708503m, N 844601m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 54.338559, -6.331437
This site was excavated as part of the recently completed BGE (Northern Ireland) gas pipeline. Trial-trenching had revealed possible archaeological features in the vicinity of a series of small mounds. Re-excavation of the trench revealed a rich, dark-brown loam topsoil, 0.3m thick, overlying a very gravelly clay subsoil with two possible linear cuts at the northern end of the trench on either side of the possible remains of a removed bank. Excavation showed this, the 2.4m-wide northernmost feature, to be a slight undulation in the subsoil filled with grey/brown clayey soil and not an archaeological feature and that the 2m-wide southern cut was a post-medieval land drain, 0.44m deep, filled with grey/brown clayey soil. These linear features lay on either side of a slightly raised area of subsoil some 9.1m wide with gently sloping edges that was merely an undulation in the surface of subsoil and not a removed bank. A wide band of waterlogged, grey, clayey soil uncovered at the southern end of the trench proved to be the remains of a removed field boundary. The feature continued beyond the southern end of the trench and the exposed portion measured 4.5m wide.
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