2008:328 - CASTLEWARD, Down

A three-week excavation facilitating public participation was undertaken at the site of the Queen Anne house in the Castleward demesne, Strangford, Co. Down (Murray et al. 2008). The excavation was run as a collaborative project between the Centre for Archaeological Fieldwork (CAF) at Queen’s University, Belfast, and the National Trust for Northern Ireland (NT), supported by the Northern Ireland Environment Agency (NIEA).

In 1710, Judge Michael Ward married Anne Hamilton of Bangor and a few years later, c. 1714, he constructed a new home on the family estate. The house is shown in plan on two estate maps of c. 1800 and 1813 and on the first-edition OS map of 1834 but it had been demolished by the time of the second-edition OS map in 1859. In 2007 a soil resistivity survey was undertaken by the CAF across the former house site and the survey results showed a subrectangular low-resistance anomaly that corresponded well with the house plan as shown on the estate maps. In order to qualify these results it was decided to undertake a small evaluative excavation in 2008.

Three trenches were opened. Trench 1 (2m by 21m) was opened perpendicular to the long axis of the linear anomaly and three closely set parallel walls running east–west were uncovered towards the middle of the trench. All three had been levelled to the same height, c. 0.3m below the modern ground surface, and the walls’ dimensions (width and height) from north to south were: 0.6m by 1.7m, 0.6m by 0.5m and 0.4m by 0.3m. The walls have been interpreted as the cellar and main wall of the house, a retaining wall for a light well and an insubstantial wall supporting a minor architectural feature such as steps or a garden wall, respectively. Two test-pits (2m by 2m), located 2m and 9m north of Trench 1, were opened to try and locate the northern wall(s) of the house. No walls were found in either test-pit (Trenches 3 and 4), but the nature of the deposits uncovered suggested that the pits straddled the probable location of the wall(s) indicating that the dimensions of the house, north–south, would range between 17.1m and 21.1m.

The fourth trench, Trench 2 (2m by 10m), was opened south-east of Trench 1 to investigate angled linear anomalies representing possible garden features. No structural features were found, although prehistoric flints were recovered from the lowest horizon overlying the subsoil.

Reference
Murray, E., Macdonald, P. and Conway, M. 2008 Excavations at Castle Ward, Lecale Review 6, 18–23.