County: Down Site name: MOURNE HOSPITAL, MAGHERAMURPHY, KILKEEL
Sites and Monuments Record No.: N/A Licence number: AE/11/057E
Author: Colin Dunlop
Site type: Testing
Period/Dating: —
ITM: E 730266m, N 814827m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 54.066087, -6.009866
Eight trenches were opened within the site. All were cut through dark brown sandy clay topsoil overlying light orange-yellow sandy clay subsoil. Monitored test-trenching did not uncover any evidence for the presence of a cemetery to the north of the original workhouse Fever Hospital. An archaeological feature was, however, uncovered in Trenches 5 and 6 and was subsequently investigated.
It is probable that the feature uncovered in Trench 5 represents the northern end of the large curvilinear feature (c. 20m long and 0.3m wide, aligned north-east/south-west) uncovered in Trench 6. The feature, while possibly or even probably archaeological, may have been associated with groundworks or even earlier farming practices. The artefacts recovered were from the topsoil and represent general 19th- and 20th-century waste.
Northern Archaeological Consultancy Ltd, Farset Enterprise Park, 638 Springfield Road, Belfast BT12 7DY
