County: Galway Site name: Letterfrack
Sites and Monuments Record No.: GA023-016----- Licence number: 17E0423
Author: Jerry O'Sullivan, TII Archaeologist, Transport Infrastructure Ireland
Site type: Cairn (site of), undated
Period/Dating: —
ITM: E 470579m, N 757550m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 53.551900, -9.953162
A cairn was identified in a roadside setting in Letterfrack townland, west of the village of Letterfrack, by the first edition Ordnance Survey six-inch map of 1840. This was not extant by the second edition map of 1890, when it was recorded as 'Cairn (site)'. Inspections by the Archaeological Survey of Ireland in the 1980s, and by the writer in 2017 and again 2018, found no remains of the cairn. Nonetheless, the site was monitored by the writer in 2019-2020 in the course of road improvement works by Galway County Council. Nothing of any archaeological significance was found within the road improvements site but a second and previously unrecorded cairn was identified on high ground south of the road improvements site and is now entered in the Sites and Monuments Record as GA023-054----. The N59 West of Letterfrack road improvements project was funded by Transport Infrastructure Ireland.
National Roads Project Office, Corporate House, Ballybrit Business Park, Galway H91 KT67
