County: Down Site name: 96a Monlough Road, Saintfield
Sites and Monuments Record No.: DOW 016:039 Licence number: AE/17/14
Author: Stephen Gilmore
Site type: Early medieval rath
Period/Dating: —
ITM: E 740396m, N 861753m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 54.484786, -5.833222
Monitored test trenching was carried out in advance of a single house construction to the north of the location of a badly truncated ringfort (DOW 16:39), which partially exists under a farmyard. The watching brief was carried out on 3 February 2017.
The very badly truncated remains of the rath were uncovered in the southern end of two trenches and survived as two lengths of badly truncated, only slightly surviving linear features. In Trench 1, the western section of the rath was c.3m in length and 0.6m in width, while Trench 2, the eastern section was 2.5m in length and 1m in width. They were uncovered below 1m of farmyard and rubble waste and were badly contaminated. Because of this it was deemed pointless in attempting to investigate further to try and retrieve dating information.
As the rath would not be impinged upon by the house and garage construction, its position was recorded and the test trenches were covered with building fabric and reburied.
NAC, Farset Enterprise Park, 638 Springfield Road, Belfast, BT12 7DY
