County: Sligo Site name: Castle Field, Enniscrone
Sites and Monuments Record No.: Vicinity of SL016-018--- Licence number: 21E0064
Author: Eoin Halpin
Site type: Urban - no archaeology found
Period/Dating: —
ITM: E 528985m, N 830171m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 54.215510, -9.088793
Enniscrone and District Community Development Company proposed to develop a new running track and football field within Castle Field, in Enniscrone, Co Sligo. The area was utilised as a football pitch. However, due to the archaeological sensitivity of landscape within which the development was proposed, particularly the area of the possible passage tombs, the Community Development Company commissioned an archaeological impact assessment of the project.
Although it was thought highly probable that the area of the proposed development, which was used as a football pitch, was levelled sometime in the past, this cannot be stated with certainty, therefore it was possible that at least some areas of the subject site might be undisturbed with the potential of archaeological deposits surviving in situ. The proximity of the prehistoric megaliths to the north (SL016-015--- and 016---), the early medieval rath to the north-east (SL016-017001-) and the castle (SL016-018--- ) and church site (SL016-019---) to the north-east and east respectively, means that the potential was high for any such surviving deposits to be of some significance.
Testing took place in April 2021 and consisted of four machine-dug test trenches, one at either end of the proposed running track, to the east and west, and two further trenches running along the northern and southern boundaries. Subsoil in the main consisted of a mixture of shattered limestone and shale bedrock interleaved with pockets of yellow-brown compacted glacial till. The boundary between undisturbed natural and the overlying topsoil was very sharp, with the topsoil a consistent 0.3m in depth and comprising a dark yellow-brown friable clay loam.
Nothing of archaeological interest was noted in any of the four trenches examined. The sharp boundary between the undisturbed subsoil and the overlying topsoil suggests that the area had been the subject of significant scarping, which would support the information from local sources which records the area of the football pitch having been levelled in the relatively recent past. The results of the testing suggested that as a consequence of these levelling works anything of archaeological interest which might once have survived in the area has been removed.
AHC Ltd, 36 Ballywillwill Road, Castlewellan, Co. Down BT31 9LF
