County: Antrim Site name: A6 Dualling Randalstown to Castledawson (Borrow pits)
Sites and Monuments Record No.: n/a Licence number: AE/16/196
Author: Gavin Donaghy
Site type: Early medieval rath
Period/Dating: —
ITM: E 703489m, N 889078m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 54.739071, -6.392887
Three large Borrow pits (A. B and K) were tested along the A6 Dualling Randalstown to Castledawson. One was found to contain an early medieval rath with an internal round house. The circular enclosure is located on the hilltop, at the boundary of, and passing into the road scheme area. It had a c.45m internal diameter and an entrance gap in the east.
Internally there was one roundhouse, c.6m x 8m in diameter defined by a wall slot. There were also a small number of post-holes surrounding the wall slot which may have been structural supports. The roundhouse slot was 0.4m wide and 0.3m deep and contained some sherds of medieval Ulster coarse pottery (7th-12th century AD). This feature was excavated and recorded under licence AE/17/07. The full detailed results of this excavation will be submitted to excavations.ie once they are complete.
NAC, Farset Enterprise Park, 638 Springfield Road, Belfast, BT12 7DY
