County: Meath Site name: STALLEEN, DONORE
Sites and Monuments Record No.: N/A Licence number: 11E0454
Author: Kieran Campbell
Site type: Furrows, field boundary
Period/Dating: —
ITM: E 704134m, N 772618m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 53.692880, -6.423242
An assessment was carried out in compliance with a request for Further Information from Meath County Council on a site for a dwelling house on the road west out of Donore village. The site, zoned residential, lies within the southern Buffer Zone of the Boyne Valley Archaeological Park/Brú na Bóinne World Heritage Site. The 1909 OS six-inch map shows two small fields which approximate to the present development area but these boundaries are not now evident. On the opposite side of the road, south of the site, geophysical surveying and test-trenching in 2008 identified a subsurface enclosure of archaeological significance (An Bord Pleanála Inspector’s report PL 17.237779; Excavations 2008, no. 1426).
A geophysical survey by Landscape & Geophysical Services (Consent No. 11-R-0133), using the magnetic gradiometry method on a 1m x 0.25m grid, reported no geophysical anomalies that could be interpreted as being due to subsurface archaeology but drew attention to some subtle features in the data (weak circular feature, possible arcuate feature and possible pit anomalies) that may be natural in origin or due to thickening soils as a result of ploughing.
Five test trenches, total length 80m, revealed agricultural furrows and the ditch of a removed field boundary, possibly represented in the geophysical data by ‘possible pit anomalies’.
6 St Ultan’s, Laytown, Co. Meath
