2006:478 - Ballyvarley 1, Down

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.