County: Galway Site name: Tullagh Upper
Sites and Monuments Record No.: GA105-192 Licence number: 18E0568
Author: Richard Crumlish
Site type: Architectural fragments
Period/Dating: —
ITM: E 560478m, N 716534m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 53.197776, -8.591490
Monitoring of topsoil stripping at a development in Tullagh Upper townland, on the western outskirts of Loughrea, Co. Galway, took place between 18 September and 9 October 2018. The project consisted of the construction of seventy-six residential units, two commercial units and a creche. The monitoring was a condition of planning and was necessary due to the location of GA105-192 within the development site. The monument, previously recorded as an Uncertain Earthwork in the SMR (1987) and as Earthwork Unclassified in the RMP (1997), was classified as a redundant record on the Historic Environment Viewer of the National Monuments Service website. Test excavations carried out by Dominic Delaney in 2008, under Excavation Licence No. 08E0601, revealed that the feature was a remnant ad-hoc bank that had utilised and augmented limestone outcrop to demarcate an area of the field. It was not an archaeological monument.
The development was located across two fields of pasture. The topsoil was stripped from the entire site, an area of 3.097ha. This reduced levels by 0.1-0.45m. Forty pits were also excavated for concrete bases for a security fence around the site compound. The pits measured 1-2m long, 0.5-1.1m wide and 0.2-0.8m deep.
Below the topsoil across the site area were natural subsoils, limestone bedrock and modern dumped material. A number of land drains and a water service crossed the site. The topsoil contained modern artefacts, as well as six pottery sherds of post-medieval date. No features or deposits of archaeological significance were in evidence.
The removal of a dry stone wall, which divided the two fields, revealed two architectural fragments (see photo attached). The first was part of a mullion. The second was a cut and dressed rectangular limestone block with a stop chamfer. The dressing suggested a 19th-century date.
The stripping/removal of the feature (GA105-192) showed it to be partly a dry stone wall and partly a low earthen bank sitting directly on natural subsoil and of no archaeological significance.
4 Lecka Grove, Castlebar Road, Ballinrobe, County Mayo
