County: Roscommon Site name: Cloonacarrow
Sites and Monuments Record No.: RO000–040 Licence number: 08E0224
Author: Mary Henry, Mary Henry Archaeological Services Ltd, 17 Staunton Row, Clonmel, Co. Tipperary.
Site type: Cut features
Period/Dating: —
ITM: E 573704m, N 795388m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 53.907215, -8.400172
Testing was undertaken on the imprint of a proposed house at Cloonacarrow c. 9km south-west of Boyle. The house site is within the constraint area for a double-banked ringfort and hut site.
Five trenches were opened on the footprint of the development site, which, apart from cultivation furrows, revealed three features. The series of cultivation furrows in one of the trenches were uniform in width and parallel, with straight clean-cut sides. This suggests a post-medieval origin, no earlier than the early to mid-19th century and the invention of the Scot’s plough.
Revealed in another trench was a substantial, well-defined linear cut, which extended across the trench on a north-west/south-east alignment and 0.48m below the present ground surface. It comprised a straight-sided cut extending across the opening for a length of 3.9m and had a width of 1.5m. The fill consisted a wet mixture of silty topsoil and redeposited natural with inclusions of gravels, pebbles and small stones. Small stones and shattered pieces of limestone were apparent extending along its north-western and south-eastern edges. This linear feature was cut from within the topsoil and into the natural deposition. It is considered this feature may have been a land drain, draining the field from south-east to north-west where the field sloped downwards gently.
In another trench a second linear feature was identified 4.1m from the west end of the trench, aligned south-east/north-west. Measuring 1.1m wide, this feature was exposed across the full width of the trench with a fill consisting of the subsoil mixed with redeposited natural, with frequent gravel inclusions and small angular pebbles and rare charcoal flecks. There was no evidence of this cut within the topsoil, although a recut was identified in the centre of it, which was filled with redeposited natural intermixed with topsoil and did originate within the topsoil. Due to the fact this feature commenced beneath the topsoil, it is considered to be of archaeological potential. No artefacts were retrieved from it to offer any dating evidence; furthermore, its function remained unknown. However, it is located beneath the proposed location of the driveway, which will be stripped to a maximum depth of 0.2m. This resulted in the feature (0.4m below present ground level) being preserved in situ.
