2010:089 - Cabhail Tighe Breac, Cahermacnaghten, Clare

A research excavation grant-aided by the Royal Irish Academy in 2008 (Excavations 2008, No. 112, 08E435) established that the building called Cabhail Tighe Breac, situated at the south-west end of Cahermacnaghten townland in the Burren, Co. Clare, is probably the schoolhouse of the O’Davoren Brehon lawyers. In 2008 a large area (48.5m2) of the interior of this late medieval/early post-medieval building was excavated in four cuttings (Cuttings A–D). Three rooms, two internal partition walls, a fireplace and associated deposits, floor surfaces, rubble, demolition and reuse deposits were discovered. The 2008 excavation confirmed that there was considerable disturbance and reuse of Cabhail Tighe Breac in the modem period, especially during the 19th century. The material culture from the primary occupation levels of the building was slight, but a tiny fragment of thin, friable slate with a single inscribed character, found in the western room in a very shallow deposit over the karst floor, is a significant find potentially diagnostic of school activity. Masters’ and scholars’ slates used for writing are a common find from medieval and Renaissance schools in Europe. The schoolhouse appears to have been first built and used in the late 15th or 16th century, as is suggested by a radiocarbon age range of 1488–1603 (UBA 13601) obtained from animal bone in a primary occupation layer at the entrance through the western partition wall of the building.
Due to time constraints, it was not possible in 2008 to fully excavate Cutting A on the east side of the eastern partition wall of the building. The cutting was covered in plastic and backfilled, with the intention of returning to complete the excavation. The 2010 excavation was undertaken to complete the excavation inside the building, to provide a north to south stratigraphic profile through the building and to advance our understanding of the relationship of the eastern partition wall to the floor deposits and to the north external wall of the building. This excavation was carried out in tandem with the excavation of an adjacent building (see No. 88 above, 10E0146) and was also grant-aided by the Royal Irish Academy and conducted as a training exercise for archaeology students of NUI, Galway.
Cutting A (1.8m by 2.3m) was excavated on the east side of the north end of the eastern partition wall of Cabhail Tighe Breac. It extended beneath a window in the north external wall of the building. The backfill from 2008, consisting of sod, spoil and rubble stones, lay directly on plastic sheeting, which in turn covered the underlying deposits and partition wall. The uppermost sod layer overlay topsoil material which in turn covered a series of deposits of rubble, mortar and clay derived from the demolition of the walls. A large stone within one of these deposits proved to be part of the general collapse. Once this collapsed material was removed, the east face of the partition wall and the outshot for a fireplace, part of which had been excavated in 2008, were fully exposed and found to have survived to a height of 0.66–0.84m. The eastern partition was constructed from karst blocks roughly shaped to rectangular form and bonded with lime mortar. The north-east quoins of the hearth wall were punch dressed. A thin deposit of moderate to loosely compact, dark-brown/grey clay and medium to fine pebbles with inclusions of occasional charcoal flecks, was identified beneath the partition wall and overlying the bedrock. The bedrock was a natural karst surface which may have been dressed level.
The north wall of Cabhail Tighe Breac was constructed of roughly hewn rectangular blocks of limestone closely jointed and laid down in relatively even courses aided by flat levellers and bonded with lime mortar. A portion of the north wall between the window and door was generally unstable and the sill stone of the single-light window situated in that part of the wall collapsed in the winter of 2009. This sill was recorded and placed in the cutting when it was backfilled.
In 2008 it was observed that the eastern partition wall was poorly constructed and appeared to partly obscure the single-light window in the north wall. Excavations in 2010 confirmed that the partition wall does in fact post-date the north wall of Cabhail Tighe Breac and that when it was built it partly obscured the west side of the window.
Just two finds, a shard of green glass and a fragment of corroded metal, were discovered during the course of the excavation. Both finds appear to be modern and are similar to the range of artefacts recovered from these contextual layers in 2008.
A preliminary interpretation of the phases of occupation of Cabhail Tighe Breac can now be proposed. The unusual architecture of the building, with its parish church or medieval hall-type proportions and late medieval pointed doorway with half-roll and fillet moulding, combined with the recovery of a fragment of inscribed slate from a floor deposit, suggests that it was purpose-built as a sgoilteagh or schoolhouse for the O’Davoren brehon law school. A radiocarbon date indicates that it was constructed c. 1500 and that it served that role until c. 1600. The building appears to have been refurbished as a residence, with a new fireplace and internal partition wall inserted during the mid- to late 17th century, most likely when Turlough O’Brien or a tenant of his occupied the townland. The building was abandoned, except for perhaps occasional use, in the 18th to 19th century, finally being used as an animal enclosure in the 20th century.