County: Antrim Site name: Ballycarry South West
Sites and Monuments Record No.: ANT047–068(S) Licence number: AE/10/30
Author: Emily Murray, Centre for Archaeological Fieldwork, School of Geography, Archaeology and Palaeoecology, Queen’s University, Belfast, BT7 1NN.
Site type: Post-medieval artillery fort
Period/Dating: —
ITM: E 744770m, N 893491m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 54.768512, -5.750086
An archaeological evaluation was undertaken at the site of a probable post-medieval fort in the townland of Ballycarry South West, Co. Antrim, over four weeks in late December 2009 and early January 2010. The fort is represented by a subsurface geophysical anomaly and was first identified in 2008 through magnetometry and resistivity surveys undertaken by Dearne Valley Archaeological Services Ltd on behalf of the landowner. The fort is not traceable in the surface topography of the field and is most clearly identified through the magnetometry survey in which it is represented by a rectilinear anomaly (c. 32.6m by 34.8m), with two projecting angular spear-shaped bastions at opposing north-western and south-eastern corners.
Six small test-trenches were opened to assess the nature of the geophysical anomaly. In two of these trenches along the northern extent of the fort, two sections of an earth- and rock-cut ditch were encountered at a depth of around 0.3–0.4m. In Trench 4 (1.5m by 4m), a roughly U-shaped ditch was recorded, 2.9m in greatest width and 1.5m in depth, with irregular gently sloping sides and a concave base. In Trench 6 (2.5m by 3m), located approximately 10m west of Trench 4, an angular length of ditch was uncovered. This represents the intersection between the ditch running roughly east–west and forming the northern long side of the fort (a portion of which was excavated in Trench 4), and the ditch forming the eastern side of the north-western corner bastion of the fort. The excavated ditch sections in the two trenches were filled by a series of fairly sterile stony loam deposits and the predominant, if almost exclusive, finds were worked flints, which cursory examination suggests are Neolithic and Bronze Age in date. No traces of mortar or brick were noted in the ditch fills and no trace of an associated bank or wall was found. Some clay tobacco pipe bowls and pipe stems were also recovered, including examples of pipe bowls of mid-17th-, late-18th- and mid-19th-century date.
