County: Waterford Site name: Ballysaggart Beg
Sites and Monuments Record No.: N/A Licence number: 06E0101
Author: Tony Cummins, for Sheila Lane & Associates, Deanrock Business Park, Togher, Cork.
Site type: Railway track
Period/Dating: —
ITM: E 605834m, N 597419m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 52.128620, -7.914780
Test-trenching was carried out before construction of a housing development in a greenfield site located c. 250m outside the south end of the zone of archaeological potential surrounding Lismore town (WA021–019). The proposed development site was subdivided by the dismantled Waterford, Dungarvan and Lismore railway line, which opened in 1878 and operated until 1967. The railway line measured c. 5m in width and survived as a low, linear, flat-topped earthen bank, the north side of which was flanked by a barely perceptible ditch.
The topsoil layer encountered in all trenches averaged 0.4m deep and contained occasional inclusions of 19th/20th-century pottery. It directly overlay the boulder clay subsoil, the surface of which was truncated by frequent cultivation furrows. The low bank forming the remains of the dismantled railway line was composed of redeposited subsoil and there were no remains of the railway tracks uncovered in any of the test-trenches. Frequent narrow cuts were visible in the subsoil under the dismantled railway line and these appeared to have been created by a toothed excavator bucket, indicating that the track was removed by machine after it went out of use in the 1960s. The shallow ditch flanking the north side of the railway line measured 4m wide by 0.4m deep and appeared to have been dug to provide upcast soil to raise the railway line above the ground level in the rest of the field. The ditch was filled with topsoil material and contained frequent inclusions of coal.
There were no archaeological features or finds recorded during test-trenching at this proposed development site.
