2006:940 - BURTONHALL DEMESNE, Kildare

The site was excavated as part of the N9/N10 Kilcullen to Waterford scheme: Kilcullen to Powerstown. Testing carried out on this site in 2005 by Brendon Wilkins (Excavations 2005, No. 741, A021/012) identified two circular pits with high charcoal content, associated with a large quantity of worked stone, prehistoric struck flints and burnt animal bone and a piece of medieval pottery.

No archaeological monuments were recorded in the immediate vicinity of the site, but a group of features are noted c. 500m to the south-east, including crop circles, probably of prehistoric date, identified through aerial photography in the adjacent large cornfield. (The site lies within Co. Kildare and the field’s southern boundary is also the county boundary.)

The site was of an irregular shape and measured 10571m2 when stripped. It lies on the northern slope of the small hill on which the mansion house of Burtonhall Demesne was built in the early 18th century. This rises up by 30m from the surrounding countryside to a highest point c. 100m to the south-west. It is currently capped by the walled 18th-century tree plantation.

Machine-stripping of topsoil was commenced on 6 February 2006 and largely completed by 25 February. Full resolution was conducted on the site between 12 April and 9 June.

Excavation revealed the line of the former field boundary ditch and many other modern agricultural features associated with it. Granite outcropping at the top of the steeply sloping site showed many toolmarks, also presumably of relatively modern date, and the whole field contained a large number of socket holes from the gathering of loose stones from the granite outcrops for use as building material and for general agricultural field clearance.

Approximately 100 cut features of potential archaeological origin were recorded, mostly along the protected slight ridge near the top of the hill. These apparently covered a wide date range, from the Neolithic to modern times, and for the most part comprised pits and post-holes, many of which showed signs of in situ burning and some of which contained burnt bone, hazelnut shells and carbonised grain.

A large group of features appear to be laid out in association with a 5m-long linear cut and may represent building foundations, although the contemporaneity of these features is not as yet demonstrable and perhaps not likely. The linear feature appears to represent the bottom of a turf wall foundation, with another more vestigial similar feature 2.2m long running parallel to it 5.5m to the south. At right angles to the linear features on the western side lay three equally spaced circular pits in a line 5m long with diameters of c. 1m and depths of 0.3–0.4m. At the eastern end of the linear features lay a group of eleven smaller circular pits with diameters averaging c. 0.5m and depths of 0.2–0.3m. The stone inclusion in many of these resembled packing for post-holes, which may be the correct interpretation of these smaller pits. Seven of them contained substantial numbers of struck flints, including thumbnail scrapers and debitage, and three contained prehistoric pottery fragments provisionally dated to the late Neolithic/Early Bronze Age; these included two sherds of grooved ware. Part of a broken polished stone axehead, probably of jadeite, appeared to have been deliberately placed at the base of one of the pits/post-holes. This group of features appears to form a rectangle, c. 6m by 11m, although it may have been truncated by the modern former field boundary at the east.

Elsewhere on the site, particularly up the slope near the western limit of excavation, a further large group of pits, generally within the same size range, were examined. Of these, at least eight contained burnt-bone fragments, several contained burnt grain and nutshells and many showed signs of burning in situ. A few amorphous metal lumps were found in two of the pits, as were the remains of a riveted medieval bone comb in another. Across the site generally, as well as unstratified prehistoric finds, a light scatter of medieval potsherds also provided background noise.

The site appears to have been the location of an area where agricultural and minor rural industrial activities were carried out, possibly away from habitation on the sheltered north-eastern slope of the hill, in the medieval period, probably the 13th and 14th centuries, from preliminary examination of the pottery. The pits appear to have performed a mix of functions, possibly corn drying, with the burnt grain as supporting evidence, and charcoal production, in the light of the large amounts found. Their position appears to have coincided with that of an early prehistoric building.

The remains were extensively sampled and such tentative interpretations as can be made at this stage may need substantial revision in the light of dating results and specialist assessment and analysis, which have yet to be carried out.

Unit 1, Wallingstown Business Park, Little Island, Cork