2025:594 - Drumfin, Kilmorgan, Sligo

Test excavations were carried out on a site at Drumfin, Kilmorgan, Co. Sligo, in November 2025. The site comprises green fields bounded by mature trees, with a farm complex and access road bordering the site to the southeast, and a local road (L3700) along the east side. An overhead powerline extends roughly east–west through the site. The internal hedgerows had recently been cleared. Twenty-six test trenches were excavated across the site. The natural soil was a compact, mid-grey sandy silt with frequent small to large angular and subangular stones.

Several modern agricultural plough furrows were exposed in Trenches 1, 3, 5, 8-13, 17 and 24. These furrows were on average 0.3-0.5m in width and 0.1-0.2m in depth and were filled with a dark brown clay. Alongside agricultural furrows, modern field boundaries and ditches were exposed in Trenches 16, 17, 21 and 23 and were consistent with those found on the 6-inch (1838) and 25-inch (1916) editions of the Ordnance Survey (OS) of Ireland maps.

A stone-lined kiln (C6) was exposed in Trench 22, in the centre of the east field of the site, just north of the cottage and farm. The trench was extended in order to fully expose the feature. Preservation in situ was not possible; therefore, excavation was proposed under the existing licence (25E1025) of an area measuring 15m by 15m around the kiln, to preserve it by record (i.e., fully excavate by hand) and any associated features exposed.

The kiln was identified at a depth of 1.2m within Trench 22, in what was likely a natural depression that was filled over time. The kiln was fully excavated by hand and planned at a 1:20 scale, while three bulk palaeo-environmental samples were collected from archaeological deposits (C5, C11, C12). The kiln consisted of a stone-lined chamber to the southwest, a stone-lined flue and an entrance to the northeast.

The kiln appeared to have had two phases of use – an earlier elongated U-shaped structure that was later infilled in the centre to form a bowl at the south-west end and a narrow flue connecting the bowl with the entrance. A deposit of lime outside the entrance appears to represent lime raked out from the structure suggesting that the kiln represents a small lime kiln rather than a cereal or drying kiln.