2006:723 - ENNISKILLEN: Enniskillen Castle, Fermanagh

Prior to the laying of non-slip floor tiles in the ‘atrium’ area of the ‘keep’ of Enniskillen Castle, a small evaluation excavation was carried out to see if archaeological strata were present beneath the modern floor levels and to ensure that they were not disturbed by the new flooring.

Enniskillen Castle is located, on a bend in the River Erne, on the west side of the main island of Enniskillen, upon which the core of the later Plantation town was erected. At the core of the current structure is a 15th-century Maguire tower-house. The tower-house was first directly mentioned in an entry in the Annals of Ulster for the year 1439: ‘and the castle of Inis-Ceithlenn was given to Donal Mag Uidhir’ (Hennesey 1998, 143). A reference, in the Annals of Ulster to the castle of Mag Uidhir, in 1438, probably also relates to Enniskillen Castle (ibid, 141). The tower-house was badly damaged when it was captured by the English in 1594 (Hunter 2004, 112), an event which has been illustrated in contemporary manuscripts (ibid, 128–9). Measurements of the Maguire castle made at the time of the castle’s capture in 1594 demonstrate that the modern ‘keep’ is, at least at its base, essentially the same structure as the medieval tower-house (ibid). The tower and walling were repaired in the early 17th century by Sir William Cole, who also constructed the Watergate (ibid, 130). In the late 18th century the tower-house was refurbished as an army barracks, with its upper wall levels removed and rebuilt in Georgian style.

The area opened by the removal of the modern floor measured 3.2m (east–west) by 2.2m. Immediately under the flagstones was a layer of rubble and mortar, 60mm thick, which had been partially consolidated by concrete poured on to it to make a solid base for the floor.

At the base of this rubble layer there was a layer of greyish, mortar-rich, friable, sandy loam which was up to 40mm in depth and covered most the trench. Directly below this mortar-rich layer there were a number of apparently archaeological mortar-rich sand and clay layers. As these were left unexcavated, the exact stratigraphic relationships between them were left uncertain. They all appear, however, to have been stratified above a substantial dressed stone wall and a more diffuse stone setting, which may have been the remnants of a coarsely cobbled surface. The length of the wall was at least 1.65m running north-east to south-west and up to c. 0.65m thick.

A small box-section, 1.4m by 0.5m, excavated beside the east side of the wall revealed that it had been set into a foundation cut. The foundation was cut into a dark-grey/brown clay that contained within its matrix some flecks of charcoal. Unfortunately it was not possible to say if this represented a natural layer. The charcoal material may be indicative of cultural activity and may point to earlier occupation at the site, but could alternatively be naturally occurring.

The disturbed upper layer contained animal bone and mid-20th-century pottery. The mortar-flecked layer beneath this contained some bone as well as some small clay-pipe stem fragments and creamware-type pottery dating to the later 18th or early 19th century. No artefacts were found from the other strata.

The evaluation established the existence of archaeological strata beneath the modern floor layer in the atrium area of Enniskillen Castle ‘keep’ and by extension has suggested that there may well be survival of similar structural elements beneath other floor deposits in the building. The mortar-rich sandy loam which covered the entire trench, beneath the modern disturbed level, contained finds that date to the late 18th or early 19th century. The strata below this layer are undated by artefacts but seem likely to be part of the medieval Maguire tower-house. The wall, although constructed from dressed stone blocks, was not substantial enough to have been a load-bearing wall of a tower-house and it is likely that it may represent an internal partition within the medieval tower-house, possibly representing the east side of the wall of a staircase (Dr. C. Donnelly, pers. comm.). This may suggest that the stone setting beside it represents a roughly cobbled floor surface in the entrance area of the tower-house.

References
Hennesey, W.H. 1998 The annals of Ulster. Edmund Burke, Dublin
Hunter, R.J. 2004 Sir William Cole, the town of Enniskillen and Plantation County Fermanagh. In E.M. Murphy and W.J. Roulston, Fermanagh history and society. Dublin

School of Geography, Archaeology and Palaeoecology, Queen’s University, Belfast