2010:594 - Cloghboley, Sligo

A new house is proposed to overlap the footprint of the existing ruinous three-roomed house, abandoned in 1974, which is close to ringfort SL007–020. Six short trenches, 1.4–1.6m in width, were opened because of the buildings. The three trenches in the front gardens, 10m 13m and 12m, reached undisturbed natural at 0.7–0.85m.
The only feature encountered was a stone-lined and stone-roofed drain running parallel to the roadside 1m in and 0.3m below the garden surface. It was 0.3m in height above the silt, which was at least 0.15m in depth, and was 0.18–0.22m in width. There were very few pieces of crockery in the deep soil beside the house.
Three trenches were opened in the farmyard behind the house. Trench D ran east–west and was to test the full width of the site opposite where the cashel comes closest to it. The distance from one end to the other end as dug was 19.8m. A section of 4.5m in length was not dug because of the presence of a water, electricity and phone services trench crossing the site to serve the 1996 house to the west.
A dump of about 40 cockleshells was exposed at 3.8m out from the north-west corner of the house. There were no finds. The sea is c. 1km away.
Trench E was dug to a distance of 39.3m from the back wall of the concrete extension of the house.
Trench D and the southern end of Trench E exposed spreads of stones that would have been laid down for the farmyard behind the house and alongside the farm sheds. Other than the cockleshells, the soil was free of remains from the time the house was occupied.
Trench F was opened for a length of 18m across the back of the site. It and the northern half of Trench E were dug through a very rich and somewhat sandy soil. There were no items from the time the house was occupied.