2016:250 - Hillsborough Castle Gardens (Small Park), Down

The remit of this work was to examine whether any remains from the garden features noted to the rear of the walled garden on William Byers map of 1788 were present. The Byers map shows that, in the study area to the south-east of the walled garden, two sinuous paths run on either side of a large formal garden feature, assumed to be a parterre. Running along the edge of the outer wall of the walled garden is a path identified as the ‘Slip Path’ in a map of 1770. The parterre may have marked a formal entrance into the walled garden, and therefore a doorway may have been present through the wall at this time, presumably in line with the path on the opposite side of the wall. While no other entrances are marked the layout suggests that the entry at the south-east corner of the walled garden was now closed, while the one in the north-east corner remained open.

The medieval church site is marked as 'Crumlin' and is encircled by a path. The moss walk is present. Further sinuous paths run to the south-west of the moss walk and around the north-east side of the walled garden.

A single test trench was excavated across the location of the path which ran north-east from the parterre. This trench was located a distance of 42.5m from the north-east corner of the walled garden, and placed perpendicular to this wall. The trench began 20m from the wall and was manually excavated towards it in a north-westerly direction. The trench was 0.6m wide and a total length of 9m long (excavated in two sections, see Plates 1 and 2), excavations having ceased on identification of the extent of the path.

At a remove of 15.8m from the walled garden wall a layer of compact gravel containing a small quantity of coloured pea gravel, and occasional brick and glass fragments was encountered. This layer continued towards the walled garden for a distance of 3.3m. This layer corresponds with the location of the path noted on William Byers map of 1788, and as such it can be assumed that the gravel path excavated and recorded here is this path.

With the corroboration of the map evidence through fieldwork it was deemed unnecessary at this pre-development stage to undertake examination of the parterre, or the path which runs south-west from the parterre (as had originally been planned) as it must now be assumed that these were present. This fieldwork will now be used to inform the garden designs going forward with development of Hillsborough Castle Gardens.

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