2008:356 - Portaferry, Down

Monitoring was carried out along part of the route of new mains and sewerage pipelines through the town of Portaferry, at the south-west tip of the Ards Peninsula. The monitored portion of the route, 434m long, ran from the shore north through Castle Street, behind the houses in Church Street (the Rope Walk), through a carpark and on through Portaferry Wood.
The pipeline trench flanked existing services and, as such, the route had been already much disturbed. Further, in Castle Street the bedrock was close to the surface, resulting in archaeological remains being limited to small deposits of charcoal-flecked soil and midden material; i.e. shellfish and butchered bone. Sherds of post-medieval pottery and roof slates were also recovered. The trench ran within 13m of Portaferry Castle, a State Care monument, and parallel to Portaferry Hotel, part of which once accommodated a tannery.
The fact that the Rope Walk had been used as a millpond for the watermill to the north-east of the hotel was confirmed by base layers of peat and sleech. There were considerable quantities of oyster shells and post-medieval pottery – i.e. blackware and sgraffito ware – found along this section of the route. There was also much glass derived from blown and hand-finished bottles, dark-green in colour, with a short neck, globular body and large kick (indentation) in the base. These are characteristic of the onion bottle, in use during the late 17th and early 18th centuries.
At the south of the Rope Walk the trench revealed a composite wooden structure composed of two horizontal levels of planks, each 50mm thick, joined by wooden pegs or dowels 30mm in diameter. The upper level consisted of a single plank, 240mm wide, which projected beyond the lower level, which was composed of two planks, one 75mm wide and the other varying in width from 75mm to 40mm; this change in width appeared to be deliberate. They were flanked on the north and south sides by similar planks, again 50mm thick, positioned on their edges with an elevation of 180mm. All the wood appeared to be pine.
An 1896 map of the town showed the millpond being traversed by narrow walkways from the path in the west to the backs of the Church Street houses in the east. One of the paths is depicted at the south end of the millpond where the wooden structure was located.
Between the Rope Walk and the carpark was a masonry culvert. The first-edition OS map depicted this feature directing water from an upper millpond in what is now the carpark into the Rope Walk. Two small sherds of medieval pottery with spots of glaze were also recovered directly below the sod in the carpark. This section of the trench ran within 20m of Templecraney, a late medieval ecclesiastical enclosure.
The trench through Portaferry Wood cut through four features, 0.8–1.7m wide and 0.35–0.85m deep, filled with stones and coarse soil. Also uncovered was a shallow pit, 1.7m wide and 0.2m deep, containing charcoal-flecked soil and a single sherd of coarse late medieval pottery. It was identified in both trench sections, making it at least 1.8m long.