County: Kildare Site name: CELBRIDGE: Conolly Folly, Castletown House
Sites and Monuments Record No.: N/A Licence number: 07E0048
Author: Maedbh Saunderson, Arch-Tech Ltd.
Site type: No archaeology found
Period/Dating: N/A
ITM: E 697844m, N 734212m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 53.349070, -6.530429
A monitoring programme was undertaken around Conolly Folly, which is in the grounds of Castletown House, Celbridge, Co. Kildare, undertaken on behalf of the Office of Public Works. Monitoring commenced on 20 February and concluded three days later. It comprised the monitoring of trenches for CCTV ducting to connect to the CCTV system at the main house, and a number of post-holes were also excavated for the CCTV camera posts. Conolly Folly is situated to the north-west of Castletown House in the townland of Barrogstown.
The archaeological record shows that there was activity in the Celbridge area from at least the Late Bronze Age onwards. The excavations associated with the Celbridge interchange uncovered a substantial amount of early medieval material, mainly of an industrial nature. Investigations within Celbridge town have produced little archaeological material, the 17th-century replanning of the borough probably being responsible for this. Apart from monitoring undertaken at the farmyard associated with Castletown House, no previous archaeological investigations have taken place in the vicinity of the house; however, a possible fulacht fiadh was found within the deer park estate.
The excavation works were undertaken using a mini-digger equipped with a grading bucket measuring 1m in width. No features or deposits of archaeological interest were identified during the monitoring programme.
32 Fitzwilliam Place, Dublin 2
