County: Kilkenny Site name: Grange
Sites and Monuments Record No.: KK009-024 Licence number: 20E0578
Author: Mary Henry
Site type: Cropmark
Period/Dating: —
ITM: E 642645m, N 669733m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 52.776938, -7.367943
As part of planning permission to build a farm shed with underground tanks and undertake associated site works at Grange townland, Ballyragget, Co. Kilkenny, a programme of archaeological testing was required as the proposed farm redevelopment works are located within the confines of an enclosure (KK009-024). However, it is not visible at ground level or on Ordnance Survey maps. It was identified on an aerial photograph. All that is apparent on the photograph is its northern half, which is visible as a cropmark. Described as a roughly oval enclosure (dims. C. 30m east-west), a large farm building, built 40 years previous, occupies the southern half of the monument. There is now no trace at ground level of the northern half. The new shed will abut this existing farm building.
Three test trenches were opened on the imprint of the proposed building. No archaeological remains or features were identified in the test trenches. Beneath the hardcore/crushed stone layers there was extensive infilling including a mixed re-buried topsoil. Modern farm waste was found within these infilled layers/deposits, which were deeper at the eastern end of the site, where trench No.1 was sited. The site, including the existing shed, is c. 1m higher than the field to the east. It would appear that when ground works were undertaken for the construction of the existing farm building a large area was topsoil stripped and excavated. The excavated material, including topsoil, appear to have been deposited on the adjoining ground, the site of the proposed farm shed, as part of backfilling and reinstating the site. It appears the previous ground works obliterated any monument that may have survived.
17 Staunton Row, Clonmel, Co. Tipperary
