County: Down Site name: Rathcillan
Sites and Monuments Record No.: DOW049:007 Licence number: AE/15/75E
Author: Eoin Halpin
Site type: Greenfield development
Period/Dating: —
ITM: E 736839m, N 831960m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 54.218232, -5.901731
The site evaluation took place in April 2015, on a proposed house and garage development at 90 Bryanford Road, Newcastle, Co Down, located close to the scheduled monument of St Cillan Fort, DOW049:007.
The results revealed that the original access road into Rathcillan House entered the site midway along the northern boundary and ran in a south-west direction. It then curved round, running out of the site, roughly mid-way along the site’s eastern boundary. The evaluation revealed that the construction of this access road involved scarping into the original hill slope to create a surface of relatively shallow gradient, onto which a tarmacadamed roadway was constructed. The effect of this scarping and road construction was to completely remove all evidence of the original ground surface to a depth of some 1.2m on the northern and eastern sides of the development area.
The original ground surface survived to the west and south of this scarp line and consisted of a variegated compact glacial till, the surface of which was heavily disturbed by tree root activity. No archaeological features or deposits were noted.
The evaluation found that there would be some visual impact, insofar as the development represents the construction of a building in the only ‘green’ space on the western side the monument, but this impact is deemed to be slight to negligible due to the amount of construction already in the area.
36 Ballywillwill Road, Castlewellan Co Down
