County: Longford Site name: Rathcronin, Granard
Sites and Monuments Record No.: LF010–010 Licence number: 06E0781; E2838
Author: Declan Moore, Moore Archaeological & Environmental Services Ltd, Corporate House, Ballybrit Business Park, Ballybrit, Galway.
Site type: Testing
Period/Dating: —
ITM: E 629983m, N 781767m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 53.784615, -7.545024
Testing was carried out at Rathcronin, Granard, Co. Longford, in February 2007. The proposed development entails the construction of 111 houses. The development is beside LF010–080(01–02), a national monument. A request for further information relating to the application required the applicant to carry out an archaeological assessment of the site to include the excavation of test-trenches.
The work was commissioned in order to determine the archaeological potential of the area, to determine how the archaeological resource would be affected by the proposed development and to ground-truth the results of a previously conducted geophysical survey.
Twelve test-trenches were excavated throughout the site. These trenches were excavated in both a north–south and an east–west orientation. A number of the geophysical anomalies were subsequently identified as natural geological features.
Two possible archaeological features were also identified. The first of these was a portion of a possible subrectangular enclosure measuring c. 30m by 23m. The second feature was a series of possible post- and stake-holes. Although no datable material was recovered from either of these features, their form and nature appeared to indicate that they were of archaeological significance and warrant further investigation.
