What is recorded here

Half buried beneath a Cookstown lane, the medieval forge still holds its shape: a long frame-built hall whose floor is packed with charcoal, iron slag and broken cooking pots. At its centre sits a doughnut-shaped trough around four post-holes, perhaps where glowing metal was dipped, cooled and struck again. Beside it stands a narrower workshop with a doorway windbreak and two rooms, while a shallow ditch marks the edge of the working place. The buildings are not grand, but they are exact: a small human engine of heat, noise and repeated labour, hidden under ord

A medieval settlement developed around a WNW-ESE section of a lane that is marked on the 1836 and later editions of the OS 6-inch map running to a farmstead c. 100m to the W and into fields further W where it extends off to the NW. Three structures were excavated (03E1252) by R. Clutterbuck between January and May 2004 on the S side of the lane (excavations.ie 2004:1211), all of which were frame-built with slot-trenches to accommodate the sill-beams. Structure I is identified as a forge (dims 8.5m NW-SE; 5m plus NE-SW) with an entrance (Wth 0.6m) at the centre of the SW side. It was truncated by a 17th century drain at NE and it might not have been roofed as there is little evidence of roof supports. The floor was suffused with trodden-in charcoal, slag and sherds of Leinster cooking ware but there was no hearth or furnace bottoms. At the centre was an area (dims 1.5m x 1.3m) with four post-holes and stake-holes surrounded by a doughnut-shaped pit (diam. 2.5-3m; D 0.3m) which may have been a quenching trough around a central bench. Iron slag and scale from iron-working was found in the trough and in the slot-trenches. The bench was replaced at a later stage by a slighter though similar structure. (Clutterbuck 2009, 29-33; 2009a 31-3) Structure II was attached to the NW of the forge and consisted of an earthfast building (dims 9.5m NW-SE; 3.5m NE-SW) defined by slot-trenches (Wth 0.5-0.6m; D 0.22-0.3m), with an entrance (Wth 1.1m) in the centre of the SW wall. A line of four post-holes extends out SW and then SE from the doorway, which may have acted as a windbreak, and internally there is a short cross-wall attached to the NE wall, dividing it into two rooms. It is interpreted as a workshop for the forge. A shallow ditch (Wth 2.1m; D 0.6m), whose fills held sherds of Leinster cooking ware and coarse Dublin ware, separated Structure II from Structure III further to the W. (Clutterbuck 2009, 33-4) See the attached plans from Clutterbuck (2009, figs 17, 18) ME039-009_2 Annotated site plan; ME039-009005-_1 Structures I and II; Compiled by: Michael Moore Date of upload: 5 May 2022

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