2008:815 - King John’s Castle, Carlingford, Louth

Prior to safety and access improvement works to be carried out by the Office of Public Works at King John’s Castle, Carlingford, excavation of four areas was undertaken from 15 September to 3 October 2008. The four areas excavated included: a cutting at the exterior of the western wall of the castle; a cutting in the interior of the original gatehouse entrance; a cutting on both sides of the entrance through the interior spine wall; and the excavation of infilled deposits in the lower solar area at the east and south-east of the castle.
The cutting at the exterior of the western wall of the castle confirmed that the original entrance to the medieval gatehouse is still extant beneath the modern alterations to the castle’s exterior. Excavation also showed that the original entrance was narrower than previously thought, measuring only 1.25m in width at this point.
An intact paved surface with built-in drainage gullies was uncovered in the interior of the gatehouse entrance and guardrooms as well as a stone-lined cistern in the northern guardroom. Several sherds of pottery of 17th-century date were recovered from deposits immediately overlying the paved surfaces. These floor surfaces, therefore, appear from the evidence of the earliest overlying deposits to be of 17th-century date, indicating that the castle was occupied at least temporarily in the early post-medieval period. It was unclear without excavating below these surfaces whether the original medieval surfaces had been destroyed by this later phase of occupation or had simply been modified.
Excavation on the west side of the spine wall revealed an apparently linear feature and an adjacent pit. The function of these two features is unclear; the linear feature with its roughly coursed drystone lining was similar in appearance to a souterrain, a feature-type in which County Louth is abundant. Souterrains are generally dated to the second half of the first millennium ad which presents a problem in identifying the feature as such; that the eastern end of this linear feature appeared to have been built against the castle’s spine wall footings would indicate that it is of 13th-century date at the earliest, however the absence of a visible cut for the wall footings makes the relationship between the two features uncertain. A number of sherds of medieval date were recovered from the sole fill of the linear feature.
A series of infilled deposits of medieval or earlier date overlying bedrock were revealed on the east side of the spine wall. Aside from a large amount of animal bone, the only finds recovered from these infill deposits were a burnt flint flake and a triangular flint arrowhead, both of which are of presumed prehistoric date but may be residual artefacts present in soil which was redeposited in the medieval period.
The basement level solar area was cleared of overburden of later post-medieval and modern date, revealing the original floor surfaces of redeposited natural clay overlying bedrock. Several internal features were uncovered within the rooms of the solar area, including evidence for a possible internal division and mortar floor surface within the westernmost room, bedrock-cut steps in the south-eastern room, a possible flagstone floor surface, mortar thresholds and evidence for door posts in the adjoining vaulted passage, and the lower steps leading down to the blocked-up entrance in the eastern wall of the castle.
A preliminary report detailing the results of the current phase of excavation has been issued and additional phases of archaeological groundworks are expected to be undertaken in the future.