2006:1184 - Palmershill 2, Laois

This site was located within Contract 2 of the proposed M7 Portlaoise to Castletown/M8 Portlaoise to Cullahill motorway scheme and was identified during advance testing by Robert O’Hara (Excavations 2005, No. 859, A015/029). Full resolution occurred in May 2006. Palmershill 2 consisted of foundation remains of a stone building, a three-roomed rectangular structure with an annexe abutting the south-east gable. The footprint of the house measured roughly 10m by 4m and its long axis was orientated in a north-west/south-east direction. Evidence of a hearth was present in two of the three rooms but was absent from the smallest room, which may have been a store area. A concrete floor overlaid earlier surfaces in this and the adjoining room, while the third room had an earthen floor. A local landowner recalled that this room was the bedroom of the last resident of the house, an elderly man who kept pigs in the annexe to the south-east of the house. A random uncoursed wall separated this man’s bedroom from the annexe. An associated cobbled surface was also exposed, while various artefacts such as spectacles, candle-holders, iron tools, belt buckles, buttons, clay pipes, etc., were uncovered both within and outside the structure. Examination of the first-edition OS map shows that this structure was extant at this time and was, according to anecdotal evidence, standing until the early 1960s.