County: Kilkenny Site name: Castlegarden
Sites and Monuments Record No.: N/A Licence number: Unlicensed Monitoring
Author: Fiona Reilly; Shanarc Archaeology Ltd.
Site type: No archaeology found
Period/Dating: —
ITM: E 662626m, N 646030m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 52.561977, -7.076336
Unlicensed archaeological monitoring was carried out on September 7 2021, in relation to excavations associated with an approved new forest road at an existing forest block in Castlegarden, Co. Kilkenny. Excavation work was conducted by Coillte under Forest Road Licence CN87284.
The southernmost section of the works was located within 60m of a recorded monument, enclosure KK028-015, sited in the centre of the forest block. In line with Forest Road Licence CN87284, all earthworks and excavations carried out on the southernmost section of the forest road at Castlegarden were subject to archaeological monitoring.
The area to be monitored was dotted with tree stumps and the first stage of works involved the use of a ripper device on the end of the excavator boom to pull these from the staging area of the access road; following this a large grading bucket was used to strip the area down to the subsoil level.
The stratigraphy in the area comprised dry, light-grey brown, moderately compacted sandy silt measuring c. 0.14m in depth, with a moderate amount of small sub-rounded stones. The subsoil layer comprised compact, light-yellow grey, clayey silty sand with a moderate amount of small, sub-rounded stones. A number of stone-filled linear drainage cuts extending north to south were noted.
No archaeological finds, features or deposits were noted within the monitored sections either associated with recorded monument KK028-015, or other previously unknown archaeological activity.
Unit 39a, Hebron Business Park, Hebron Road, Kilkenny
