2015:617 - SKIBBEREEN: The Rock, Windmill Hill, Cork

This is a preliminary report of the 2015 investigation of six rock-cut structures atop Windmill Hill in Skibbereen, County Cork. The aim of the research was to recover material data to interpret conditions and daily life of known families occupying the structures at the time of the Great Hunger. The 2015 excavations included collaboration with the Skibbereen community group Friends of the Rock, and scholars Terri Kearney and Phillip O’Regan, from the Skibbereen Heritage Centre. Part of the fieldwork focused on the community group’s questions concerning the origins of the hill’s name and the presence of an early windmill. It is believed locally that the structures are associated with a windmill and Skibbereen’s earliest industry.

Questions concerning the function of the structures arose after exposing numerous and somewhat anomalous cuts, channels, and post-holes in the walls and floors. The features within the structures tentatively point to an earlier period of use prior to the Great Hunger. Excavations in the summer of 2015 fully exposed the floor surfaces of three of the six structures and each surface contained a different configuration of post-holes, drains, and inclines. Most of the cuts and post-holes do not reflect domestic activities and suggest an industrial component. Unfortunately, the objects recovered date to the first half of the 20th century and do not provide any indications of industrial activities nor provide information relating to the families living there during the Great Hunger. The materials do however provide an interesting database to interpret a dynamic period in Ireland’s modern history including the 1916 Uprising and Irish Civil War.