County: Meath Site name: Site 1, Summerhill Demesne
Sites and Monuments Record No.: N/A Licence number: 07E0163
Author: Aisling Collins, CRDS Ltd, Unit 4A, Dundrum Business Park, Dublin 14.
Site type: Medieval
Period/Dating: —
ITM: E 684757m, N 748577m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 53.480393, -6.723069
At the request of O’Connor Sutton Cronin, working on behalf of Meath County Council, excavation was carried out on the proposed R158 Summerhill to Kilcock road realignment between 6 March and 17 August 2007.
Testing of the route of the R158 Summerhill–
Kilcock road realignment scheme uncovered the remains of a rectangular enclosure. As the site was going to be directly impacted on by the construction of the road and associated ancillary works, it was decided that full excavation was necessary.
The site was located c. 500m east of the town of Summerhill, Co. Meath, near the base of the north-western face of a small hill at the edge of an area of marginal wetland. The northern and eastern edges of the site are bounded by the existing R158 regional road, which also marks the boundary of the townland of Summerhill Demesne and the edge of the Summerhill House estate. The site is located in the vicinity of a number of monuments, being c. 500m north-east of Lynch’s Castle (ME043–021), 500m east of an inscribed cross which is currently situated on the green in Summerhill village (ME043–021) and 1km west of a tumulus in the townland of Curraghdoo (ME043–022).
Excavation encompassed a total area of 1266m2 in a single cutting with maximum dimensions of 50m north–south by 36m. It was carried out by a team of sixteen archaeologists.
The archaeological deposits exposed consisted of a section of a large rectilinear enclosure with two leats running from the south feeding water into the enclosure ditch. The internal area of the enclosure was subdivided into a number of areas by linear gullies and slot-trenches. These areas appear to have served different purposes, all within a larger process for which the site as a whole was being used. The remains of three bowl furnaces, a large drying kiln and a large number of pits and post-holes were found in the enclosure. Only one clear structure could be identified on the site but a number of post-holes could be matched into pairs of similarly sized and shaped features. The majority of these features were concentrated immediately inside the southern limit of the enclosure. No area of the site was void of features.
