County: Meath Site name: Rooske Road, Rusk, Dunboyne
Sites and Monuments Record No.: n/a Licence number: 18E0581
Author: Tim Coughlan, IAC Ltd
Site type: Post-medieval house foundations
Period/Dating: —
ITM: E 701747m, N 740807m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 53.407580, -6.469717
Testing was carried out at the site of a proposed residential development, located at Rooske Road, Dunboyne, Co. Meath. It follows a geophysical survey by Target Geophysics (Target Geophysics 2018) in September 2018 and desktop assessment carried out by Ross Waters and Grace Corbett of IAC Ltd in August 2018.
The proposed development area is c. 5ha in size and located c. 1km to the south of Dunboyne village centre. Rooske Road forms the western limit of the site with farmland to the east, north, and south. There are farmhouses to the immediate north and south-west. The area is mainly flat with a gentle eastwards slope and mature trees along the boundaries.
The site is situated in the townland of Rusk. There are no recorded monuments within the proposed development area. The closest monument is a tower-house castle (ME050-021005) in the townland of Castlefarm c. 1.1km to the north-north-east of the proposed development. The site is included on the Garden Survey as Rusk House (ME-50-O017408), which records the demesne landscape as ‘main features unrecognisable - peripheral features visible’. The remains of Rusk House and associated farm outbuildings, which date to at least the 18th-19th century, are located at the northern end of the site.
Prior to the testing, the removal of rubble from in and around the location of the 18th-century Rusk House was monitored to ensure no damage was inflicted on any structural remains which may survive beneath the rubble. The clearance of rubble did reveal the remains of Rusk House, surviving in some areas to a height of c.2m.
Eighteen trenches were excavated across the site in October 2018 which targeted anomalies identified during the geophysical survey, blank areas where no known archaeological features were located and the location of Rusk House. Two separate cobbled surfaces were encountered, along with evidence of a formal entrance-way associated with the upstanding remains of Rusk House, which partially survive at the northern end of the site.
The remains of Rusk House, its outbuildings and yard surfaces, will be negatively impacted upon by the proposed development. There may also be an adverse impact on previously unrecorded archaeological features or deposits that have the potential to survive beneath the current ground level.
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