County: Wicklow Site name: Kiltiernan Domain
Sites and Monuments Record No.: WI026–020 Licence number: 06E1211
Author: Melanie McQuade, 30 O’Donoghue Street, Inchicore, Dublin 8.
Site type: Medieval
Period/Dating: —
ITM: E 720050m, N 722087m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 53.235591, -6.201647
Testing was undertaken on the site of a proposed house. The site lay within the RMP constraint circle for a pre-Norman church. St Tiernan’s Church lies to the south-west of the proposed development site. A manor house or castle erected by the monks of St Mary’s Abbey stood in the field to the west of the site.
Five test-trenches were excavated across the site by a mechanical excavator. All of the trenches were 2.25m wide. Testing identified a stone surface and a series of eight ditches. Sections were hand dug through these ditches.
The stone surface probably relates to the ruins of a 19th-century cottage on the west end of the site. Sherds of Leinster cooking ware were identified within four of the ditches, indicating that they date from the medieval period (late 12th to 13th century). One of the ditches dated to the post-medieval period but the dates of the other three were not established since no finds were evident during testing. Plough furrows were evident across the southern end of the site.
A substantial (c. 2m wide and 1m deep) medieval ditch could be part of a ditched enclosure. Three smaller medieval ditches, 0.78–2.3m wide and 0.22–0.38m deep, were probably dug for water management and/or agricultural use of the land.
