What is recorded here

Heat cracked the stones until they ringed like hammers, while water hissed through a clay-lined trough on the south-facing slope. The hut posts stood at the mound’s edge, a circular hearth pulsed beneath broken stone, and a deer antler lay unshed among the cinders. People may have cooked, cleaned or marked the land with heat; later they cut a ditch through the mound and built medieval homes above the old steam.

Situated on a S and SE-facing slope. Archaeological testing (08E0949) by A. Hayden on the site of a new sports pitch (excavations.ie 2008:975) recorded a burnt mound, medieval property boundaries and the site of a holy well (Tobernamuc – the pig’s well) of which nothing survived. The excavation was continued with the same director and under the same licence in April and May 2009 (excavations.ie 2009: 658), although the details are not available and the precise location of features is not known. The excavation revealed that the W end of the posts surrounding the hut-site (ME006-071001-) underlay a large mound of heat-affected stone (max. T 0.35m), beneath which was a circular hearth (diam. c. 2m), identified as a fulacht fia. Just to the S of the hearth was a rectangular trough that was partially lined with stones and clay. A large circular pit filled with burnt and broken stone was W of the trough but this pit was cut by a medieval pit. No artefacts were recovered but an unshed deer antler was recovered from the mound. A NE-SW ditch (Wth 1.5m; D 1.5m) that drained to the SW (H 1m) was dug through the mound of the fulacht fia but its SW end was cut by a medieval kiln. The ditch was closed by the time medieval occupation from the town extended over it from the 13th century onwards, and portions of six medieval properties extending NW-SE over the area were also excavated (ME006-071003-). Compiled by: Michael Moore

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