County: Meath Site name: Towlagh
Sites and Monuments Record No.: N/A Licence number: 07E0382
Author: Alan Hayden, Archaeological Projects Ltd, 27 Coulson Avenue, Rathgar, Dublin 6.
Site type: Late/post-medieval building and cultivation furrows
Period/Dating: —
ITM: E 665136m, N 745124m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 53.452158, -7.019330
A series of fifteen closely spaced parallel trenches were mechanically excavated on the site at Towlagh, Clonard, in June 2007. Part of the site lay under bog and contained nothing of significance. A system of 18th- or 19th-century cultivation furrows, drains and ditches had heavily disturbed the rest of the site.
Part of an internal dividing wall, one side wall and part of the cobbled floors of a small two-roomed drystone-walled structure survived, as it underlay a later field boundary bank. Burnt material lay on the floor and the only find uncovered was part of the basal stone of a rotary quern. The structure is probably of post-medieval date.
Traces of an earlier cultivation system, consisting of very poorly preserved cultivation furrows, survived intermittently on the site. It was laid out at a 45° angle to the later system, which ran north–south.
Only 18th–20th-century objects were uncovered from the trenches excavated.
