2013:063 - Clonbrock Demesne, Galway

Clonbrock Castle, a late 15th- or early 16th-century tower-house on the south bank of the Clonbrock River near the village of Ahascragh, is currently being restored along with a bawn turret and a series of adjacent early modern estate-workers' cottages. In January 2013, monitoring was undertaken at two locations on the site as part of an on-going programme of archaeological mitigation which has been underway since 2010?. At the first location, 55m from the south-western corner of the tower-house and 50m from the bawn, the excavation of a series of foundation trenches for an extension to an inhabited house was monitored. The trenches here totalled less than 20m in length and the excavated material was generally fine topsoil, since the extension will be built in an early modern walled garden associated with Clonbrock House. No finds or features of archaeological significance were found. At the second location, the circular turret at the south-western corner of the late medieval bawn, an early modern concrete floor was removed from within the turret to reveal a layer of broken mortar and slate which had clearly been introduced as a raising/levelling deposit prior to the insertion of the concrete floor. The removal of these concrete and rubble layers, which together were generally 0.2m deep, revealed an underlying cobbled surface which was somewhat uneven and of uncertain date. This surface was retained in situ and a modern floor will be constructed over it in order to allow the turret to be returned to a habitable condition.

Portacarron, Oughterard, Co. Galway