2008:811 - Aghnaskeagh 8, Louth

Louth County Council, the Roads Service NI (Department for Regional Development) and the National Roads Authority are currently proposing a road scheme, the A1/N1 Newry–Dundalk road. The route consists of 14.2km of 2-lane dual carriageway with 5.7km of associated link roads from Cloghoge roundabout, south of Newry, to the Ballymascanlan interchange, north of Dundalk.
Site 123 was discovered during the monitoring of mainline stripping in Area 12, c. 100m north of Site 108 (see No. 806 above) and 500m south of site 107, at road Chainage 10950. All features on Site 123 were located outside of the Phase 1 test-trenches. As bulldozers had been employed to remove the topsoil for the mainline stripping it was difficult to determine the full extent of the deposits. A mechanical back-acting digger fitted with a flat toothless bucket was employed to clean the surrounding area to determine if the archaeological deposits continued further beyond the then known site limits. The area was subsequently cleaned back by hand. Once this was completed it was possible to determine that there were two possible features, located 3m apart. The first was a small spread, oval shaped in plan, of burnt, heavily charcoaled soil measuring 1.2 by 0.7m before excavation. The second possible feature consisted of a spread of charcoal-flecked fill intermixed with stones. This spread measured 2m by 1.5m as exposed but continued beyond the limit of the excavation. There were no other features noted in the cleaned area that measured 20 by 20m. Excavation proved the spread of stones and clay flecked with charcoal to be of no archaeological significance and the charcoal-rich spread to be the probable remnant of a small fire. There were no finds from these features.

Editor’s note: This report arrived too late for inclusion in the bulletin for 2006, when the work took place.