2008:818 - CASTLERING, Louth

Pre-development testing took place in February 2008 on a site for a house at Castlering, Knockbridge, in fulfilment of a condition of planning permission. The development site was at the former site of a standing stone recorded in the Irish Tourism Association survey of 1940 and believed to have been removed in the 1940s. The stone was not indicated on either the 1836 or 1910 editions of the 6-inch OS map. The rocky outcrop referred to in the site description in the Archaeological Survey of County Louth presents as a vertical face, up to 2.2m high, for a distance of c. 40m at the south-east boundary of the site and suggests that the site had been quarried at some time in the past.

Test-trenches, excavated by a tracked excavator, uncovered an uneven surface of bedrock, under shallow topsoil, near the rocky outcrop, and clay subsoil elsewhere on the site. The conclusion of the excavator was that the standing stone might not have been an ancient monument but possibly originated from quarrying of the rock outcrop.