County: Antrim Site name: LISSANDUFF
Sites and Monuments Record No.: ANT003-002 Licence number: AE/11/76
Author: Cormac McSparron
Site type: Earthworks
Period/Dating: —
ITM: E 692894m, N 942250m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 55.218713, -6.540130
Lissanduff earthworks are situated on a slightly raised plateau just west of the mouth of the River Bush and to the east of the village of Portballintrae. They take the form of two double-banked enclosures. The northernmost (ANT003-001), which has an external bank diameter of approximately 70m, is almost circular, while the innermost bank encloses an interior 28m in diameter. The earthworks of this enclosure are interrupted to the north-west by a 19th-century house which used the innermost embanked area as a garden.
The southern enclosure (ANT003-002) has an outer bank which is more of an irregular ellipse than a circle, with a transverse diameter of about 110m, and an innermost circular bank with an internal diameter of approximately 30m. The interior of this enclosure is damp, and in the winter there is a significant accumulation of water. Prior to the construction of the drain through the banks of this enclosure the interior would have been considerably wetter, with several feet of standing water throughout the year. It is generally held that this southernmost enclosure was specially constructed to enclose a watery place.
Erosion of the side walls of a drainage ditch through the southernmost of the two earthworks at Lissanduff was observed by NIEA staff. The NIEA asked the Centre for Archaeological Fieldwork to clean and record the eroding sections in advance of conservation measures being taken by the NIEA. The excavations were carried out in June 2011.
The project revealed details of the structure of the bank, which had been constructed directly onto the subsoil, implying that the topsoil was removed from the site prior to construction. The bank covered two stone settings composed of large, rounded basaltic stones up to about 0.3m in diameter, one close to the inner edge of the bank and one close to the outer edge, set onto and possibly slightly into the subsoil. Without further excavation it was impossible to be certain about the nature of these stone settings, but their size, construction and position are consistent with their forming a key for the bank, reducing the likelihood of bank slip—which would have been considerable, given the waterlogged nature of the interior of the monument and the amount of water rising up from the subsoil.
The bank was composed of several different clay deposits and a single thinner deposit of dark silty material, thicker at the interior side of the bank and presumably dredged from the pre-existing watery deposits.
No artefacts were discovered during the excavation. Several soil samples were taken from the bank deposits and are currently being processed.
Centre for Archaeological Fieldwork, School of Geography, Archaeology and Palaeoecology, Queen’s University, Belfast BT7 1NN
