2009:286 - BALLYSTRUAN, Dublin

Testing as part of the advance works on the proposed route of the Metro North light rail project was carried out on behalf of the Railway Procurement Agency. For the purposes of these works the Metro North route was subdivided into fourteen testing areas. Testing Area 10 was located in Ballystruan townland, Co. Dublin, at the site of the Metro North alignment to Construction Compound 8 (South Portal Tunnel).

Testing of Area 10 was carried out between 24 September and 1 October 2009. A total of 46 test-trenches were excavated in one field and five areas of archaeological significance were identified.

Ballystruan 1
Ballystruan 1 is a kidney-shaped pit containing burnt-mound material and measuring 3.5m northeast/south-west by 2.5m by 0.5m deep. A faint 1.3mlong shallow north-east linear feature was identified extending from its north-western side, however this is likely to be the remains of a plough furrow or potato drill.

Ballystruan 2
Ballystruan 2 is a cluster of three oval/circular possible cremation burial-pits within an area of c. 5m by 5m. A single find of possible prehistoric pottery with slag or similar material adhering to its interior side was recovered from the topsoil in this area.

Ballystruan 3
Ballystruan 3 is a subrectangular enclosure, measuring 56m east–west by 45m. The site may date from the early medieval era, based on the absence of (later) medieval pottery and on the recovery of a fragment of concave 'furnace bottom’ iron slag from a lower fill of the enclosure ditch. The site, oriented approximately with its four sides to the cardinal compass points, consisted of an enclosure ditch on three sides (branching into a double ditch on the remaining west side) with metalled surfaces, pits, and shallower, narrower ditches surviving in its interior. Some 29.5m to the east, a shallow, metalled northnorth-east/south-south-west hollow way, c. 4.2m wide and 0.15–0.53m deep, was identified.

Ballystruan 4
A concentration of archaeological features including a shallow curvilinear ditch and two associated linear pits was identified. A nearby north-north-east/southsouth-west shallow agricultural ditch, likely to be post-medieval/modern in date, contained charcoal-rich soil where it passed through the area, possibly indicating that the drill had truncated earlier archaeology. No finds were identified and the date of the archaeology is therefore unclear. Considering its relative proximity to the subrectangular enclosure, Ballystruan 3, some 60m away, this site may represent associated remains.

Ballystruan 5
An isolated circular fire pit was identified. It is of uncertain date, but may relate to the subrectangular enclosure some 60m away (Ballystruan 3).