2024:626 - Drumgoole, Castlecomer, Kilkenny

Archaeological monitoring associated with the grant of planning permission for the construction of a dwelling house and associated site works was undertaken Drumgoole, Castlecomer. The site is in proximity to Castlecomer House, a 17^th-century house located c. 80m to the northwest.  This house, removed in the early 1970s, was built in 1638 by the Wandesforde family, a family synonymous with the development of Castlecomer town, who on purchasing a large estate from the Butlers of Ormonde, built an elaborate mansion with very extensive parkland.

The development site was supposedly occupied by a leisure lawn which was used as a bowling green during the nineteenth/early twentieth century by the owners of Castlecomer House.  The northern end of the field, where the site is located, was between 200mm and 1m below the ground level of the surrounding area, deepest in the north-east corner of the field and shallower to the south and west.

It would appear from the results of the monitoring that much of the site had previously been reduced and a thin trunking layer of stone had been deposited and screened with gravel and sand and topped with soil to provide a level playing surface for the leisure lawn/bowling green. Other than evidence for previous works undertaken on the site to accommodate landscaping works to facilitate leisure activities, nothing else was uncovered that could be associated with the nearby demised Castlecomer House.