County: Kildare Site name: Belan
Sites and Monuments Record No.: N/A Licence number: E002962
Author: Red Tobin, Headland Archaeology, Unit 1, Wallingstown Business Park, Little Island, Cork.
Site type: 19th-century cobbled trackway
Period/Dating: —
ITM: E 676870m, N 691640m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 52.970011, -6.855596
This site was excavated as part of the N9/N10 Kilcullen to Waterford scheme, Phase 3: Kilcullen to Carlow. Centreline trenching (CRDS 2006) identified a cobbled laneway, 2m in length and 1.9m wide, associated with a farmstead marked on the first-edition OS map. This map shows the site as following the western boundary of a small farmstead. The cobbles appear to define a trackway that ran inside this boundary. The map suggests a date in the first half of the 19th century for the laneway contemporary with the farm.
Excavation of this trackway added nothing more to this interpretation. Fragments of 19th–20th-century glazed domestic pottery were recovered from the topsoil over the trackway and also from beneath the cobbles.
