2019:535 - Donacarney Little, Meath

The site lies in a rural green field location, within the grounds of and adjacent to the architecturally important buildings associated with Donacarney House. In addition, a medieval tower-house lies some distance to the south-east, and previous archaeological investigations in the ground to the south of the site produced significant archaeological remains dating from prehistory through to the medieval period. Because of the historic and archaeological potential of the site, an archaeological condition was placed on the planning permission.
The testing strategy consisted of the machine excavation of 12 test trenches in the area of Phase A, all running roughly north-south, and spaced some 10m apart, each to be some 80m in length, apart from the easternmost which was some 50m in length.
In addition, Phase D, located to the south of Phase A area, was also tested. This took the form of a further 6 test trenches, again aligned roughly north-south and again spaced some 10m apart. In this case the trenches were some 50m in length.
The testing took place in May 2017. Plough soil, across Phase A, consisted of a dark yellow-brown, friable loose clay loam, and was noted on average 0.45m deep and overlay the undisturbed relatively free-draining natural, generally a compact light yellow-brown, stony glacial till. However, there was quite a variation noted across the trenches, ranging from a compact gravel to a loose silt sand. These variations, all of which were naturally occurring, appeared to conform to the layering which might be expected in a fluvio-glacial deposit.
In a number of the trenches evidence for recent ploughing was noted running diagonally across the north-south line of the trench. No evidence for land drains was noted supporting the view that the land in the area is free draining. Nothing of archaeological interest was noted in any of the 12 trenches investigated.
In Phase D, plough soil was on average 0.3m deep and consisted of a dark brown, firm, clay loam. It overlay a hard compact light yellow-brown stony clay loam, a variation in the natural glacial till. The southern end of the field had been badly disturbed by the construction of a recent housing development. Nothing of archaeological interest was noted in any of the 6 trenches investigated.
In June 2019 additional testing took place in Phases B and C, at the western end of the proposed development, under licence 17E0213 ext. The testing revealed that the southern half of Phase C was ploughed in the relatively recent past, with the boundary between the topsoil and undisturbed natural defined as ‘sharp’. Examination of the cartographic evidence, particularly the 1st edition OS map of c. 1830, revealed the northern portion of the Phase C area of the site contained the remains of a walled garden, the northern wall of which still survived, to be retained in the present development. The east-west running linear features noted would appear to be the remains of the foundations associated with the southern wall of the garden, with the archaeological trenches and the OS map showing very good concordance. The fact that the northern end of these trenches was inside the walled garden would readily explain the cultivation ridges noted and the number of tree boles noted are probably evidence for at least part of the wall garden given over to fruit trees of one sort or another. Nothing apart from archaeology associated with the use of the area as a 19th-century walled garden, was noted.
Finally, monitoring of ground works in Phase B, did not uncover anything of archaeological interest.

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