County: Mayo Site name: Ballinlena
Sites and Monuments Record No.: N/A Licence number: 08D015, 08R051
Author: Edward Pollard, The Archaeological Diving Company Ltd, Brehon House, Castlecomer, Co. Kilkenny.
Site type: 16th–19th-century admiralty anchors and landing place
Period/Dating: —
ITM: E 521266m, N 836824m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 54.274152, -9.208852
Underwater visual assessment, intertidal foreshore inspection and metal detection took place in advance of a proposed slipway development project at Kilcummin Pier, Co. Mayo. The wider receiving environment bears witness to medieval to 19th-century settlements and shipwrecks, for which Kilcummin Pier would have served as a landing place. The pier area is cited in the events surrounding an invasion by the French in 1798. Today, the pier retains 19th-century slipways, a breakwater and a winch, which are features of the area’s maritime heritage. A natural platform of limestone bedrock would have served as an original slipway, and this is evident underneath the more recent slipways and is exposed to the south. A fragment of walling from an earlier pier is also present at the low water mark (LWM). Two Admiralty anchors, broadly dated to the 16th–19th century, were observed: one is located near the high water mark between the slipway and cliff; the second is located below the LWM. The Admiralty anchors have been used by local fishermen to hold their smaller vessels.
