County: Kilkenny Site name: Castlefield
Sites and Monuments Record No.: KK024–046 Licence number: 08E0039
Author: Cóilín Ó Drisceoil, Kilkenny Archaeology, Rothe House, Kilkenny.
Site type: Ringfort
Period/Dating: —
ITM: E 659377m, N 649214m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 52.590964, -7.123669
Kilkenny County Council requested an impact assessment to include a geophysical survey at Castlefield, Dungarvan, Co. Kilkenny, as a condition of planning permission for a single-house development. The assessment comprised a desktop study of the subject site and its surrounds, a geophysical survey by Target Geophysics of the proposed development area followed by testing within the footprint of a revised proposed development layout. KK024–046, a ringfort site, was situated in the north-east corner of the development area. This is marked as an oval enclosure on the first- and second-edition OS maps. The geophysical survey disclosed a 20m-diameter bivallate enclosure, which because of the small size of the inner enclosure (10m) is more likely to have been a barrow rather than a ringfort. A series of burnt features were recorded within a 25–30m radius of the monument and these were targeting for test excavation. The remainder of the archaeological area was excluded from the development.
The testing led to the discovery of two corn-drying kilns and a number of other possibly associated small burnt features. The development was redesigned to avoid the archaeologically sensitive areas and it proceeded with archaeological monitoring. Nothing of archaeological significance was noted during the monitoring.
