2008:880 - Bangor Erris, Mayo

Test excavations took place at the site of a proposed residential development at Church Road, Bangor Erris, Co. Mayo, on 4 February 2008. MA026–004 (Megalithic tomb, unclassified) is situated in the field adjoining the proposed development. There are the ruins of a church to the north of the site built by the Binghams for Anglican worship in 1840. There is a local tradition of a cillín or children’s burial-ground on that site, but no such monument has been recorded.
Four test-trenches were opened across the site using a large tracked excavator. The test-trench array was designed to sample the entire site rather than testing specific impacts on the footprint of the scheme. A returning linear feature appeared in the south of Trench 1 at the base of a hill. It comprised three lines of silt, c. 48m wide, with clipped angle returns. The longest section measured 5m and this ran north–south in the trench. A hand-dug section revealed modern pottery in the fill which was composed of sandy silt with occasional charcoal flecks. The cut was 0.13m deep on one side grading up to the surface on the other. This feature was interpreted as the turning circle of a plough run. There were no other features in any of the trenches. The typical stratigraphy consisted of topsoil overlying bright orange to brown boulder clay with occasional inclusions of Belderg rock. There were, however, some wet areas where gley overlay silt. Nothing of archaeological significance was found as a result of testing.