2009:179 - BELLAGHY BAWN, Derry

Bellaghy Bawn is located south of the town of Bellaghy, c. 0.5m from its centre. The bawn is a state care monument, having been acquired by the NIEA during the late 1980s. The construction of the bawn began in 1619 following the allocation of the area to the Vintners’ Company during the Ulster Plantation. The bawn and Plantation town are depicted in a map drawn by Raven in 1622, which shows a square bawn with two large towers at diagonally opposite corners (Donnelly 1997, 116). The bawn was taken over and subsequently damaged during the rebellion of 1641, but was reoccupied in the late 17th century. The occupation of the bawn carried on continuously until the monument came into state care in 1987 (Donnelly 1997, 117). On the whole, the bawn survives today as a ^complex, multi-period monument’ with the original early 17th-century features visible alongside 18th-and 19th-century additions and modifications (ibid., 116). The bawn itself has been subject to archaeological investigation on two previous occasions; Nick Brannon carried out an excavation in 1989 following the monument going to state care (Excavations 1989, No. 15) and Declan Hurl excavated beneath the standing 18th-century building prior to its development as an information centre (Excavations 1995, No. 42). Both these excavations encountered a large curvilinear ditch of probable Early Christian date and it would appear that the western wall of the bawn had been constructed on the silted-up ditch of an Early Christian rath (indeed, the western wall of the bawn had ^bowed’ where the fill of the ditch had provided inadequate support for the foundations).

The excavation detailed here was originally designed as a public outreach exercise, aimed at providing an opportunity to local schoolchildren to participate in an archaeological excavation. Following a geophysical survey of the fields to the immediate west of the Bawn, high resistance anomalies (probably representing garden paths) were targeted for excavation. Two trenches (each measuring 10m in length by 2m in width and orientated north–south) were manually excavated to the surface of the natural subsoil. Following removal of the topsoil in Trench 1, a series of east–westorientated features were observed, including the remains of flowerbeds, hedge trenches and a gravelly surface that was interpreted as the remains of the garden pathway. Finds from Trench 1 included sherds of 19th-and 20th-century ceramics, glass, handmade brick fragments, flint flakes and corroded iron objects. Trench 2 was located over a discrete high resistance geophysical anomaly, however excavation did not expose anything archaeological, with topsoil directly overlying the natural subsoil. Finds from Trench 2 were generally similar to those from Trench 1.
Despite the investigation being of limited archaeological significance, it provided the opportunity for over 250 schoolchildren to visit an excavation and take active part in excavating and recording the features.
Reference Donnelly, C.J. 1997 Living Places: archaeology,
continuity and change at historic monuments in Northern Ireland. Institute of Irish Studies, Queen’s University Belfast.