2024:681 - Kilboderry, Carrick-on-Shannon, Leitrim

Test trenching was carried out as part of the pre-planning phase for a proposed housing development. The site was a greenfield site bounded by a small housing estate, pastureland, a single house, and a roadway. Ordnance Survey maps from the 19th and 20th century depicted a small house or farmstead on the site; these were no longer upstanding and were demolished at some point in the past.
In total, eight trenches were excavated across the site. Four of the trenches revealed no archaeological features, just the undisturbed natural, which was a mix of a compact yellowish-brown and greyish-brown silty clay with frequent small sub-angular stones and areas of gravel. One trench revealed the presence of modern activity. This trench had three offshoots dug to confirm it was indeed modern activity and not archaeological.
The first of these trenches contained a pit that was filled with pottery and glass dating from the 19th and 20th century. The second trench exposed the outer walls of a building. It measured about 7m in length and 4m in width with lime mortared stone walls that were 0.5m to 0.6m in width. The building was subdivided into two rooms, both with a fireplace. The final trench contained a robbed-out pit that contained 19th/20th-century building rubble. It is likely that these are the remains of the buildings depicted on the OS maps.
No archaeological features were found during testing, and no artefacts were recovered