County: Cork Site name: Ballyadam
Sites and Monuments Record No.: CO076-119; CO076-120; CO076-121; CO076-122: CO076-123 Licence number: 20E0250
Author: John O'Connor for Rubicon Heritage Services Ltd
Site type: Monitoring of ground investigations
Period/Dating: N/A
ITM: E 584218m, N 573719m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 51.915381, -8.229406
The archaeological monitoring of site investigations required in advance of a planning application for a Converter Station as part of the proposed EirGrid Celtic Interconnector Project was conducted on lands at Ballyadam, Co. Cork.
The 58 Ha site at Ballyadam was one of a number that were considered for the location of the converter station. This phase of the groundworks involved the monitoring of the excavation of Trial Pits (TP201-228) and Soakaway Pits (SW201-205). The excavation of seven trial pits (TP201, TP207 and TP215-219) and two soakaway pits (SW203 and SW204) has been put on hold indefinitely.
The stripped field undulated gently and sloped down gradually to the west from a high point in the south-east corner. The topsoil, where present, was a thin brown coarse loamy drift (001) with siliceous stone. It measured 0.1m to 0.2m deep and overlay a reddish-brown drift with siliceous stone (002).
No features of archaeological significance were recorded in any of the Trial Pits or Soakaway pits. The Trial Pits excavated within the footprint of the Converter Station showed evidence that the works carried out in 2006-7, when five burnt mounds were discovered and excavated, had involved the complete removal of the historic topsoil. This was not as evident in the remaining Trial Pits, and it is possible that some of the areas around the east and south of the Converter Station were not fully resolved at that time. As such these areas cannot be viewed as archaeologically resolved.
Unit 2, Europa Business Park, Midleton, Co. Cork, P25 TV25
