What is recorded here

Hot stones, lifted from a hidden hearth and dropped into water, would have hissed until the air itself trembled. People gathered there to cook or cleanse, turning raw material into life through patience and heat. The ringfort stands nearby, its broad platform still marking the boundary of that busy world. What seemed like ordinary kitchen work may have been ceremony, because transformation always attracts witness.

Test excavation was undertaken by Dominic Delany under licence no. 99E0461, from 30 August to 3 September 1999, before application for planning permission for four detached dwellings. The sites are within the area of constraint around a ringfort that consists of a raised circular platform (diameter 44.8m, height 1m), enclosed by a slight bank largely reduced to a scarp, and an external fosse (width 4m, depth 0.9m). The SMR file for this site also notes that a field system possibly associated with the ringfort exists in the area west and south-west of the monument. The ringfort (OF011-017001-) is 25m from the eastern edge of the proposed development site, which measures 70m north-south by 125m. Three test-trenches were mechanically excavated, 125m long and 1.5m wide, extending east-west across the site. The features encountered were three spreads of burnt material (OF011-017003-), probably levelled fulachta fiadh, and portion of a circular enclosure (OF011-017005-), possibly a ring-ditch. A large spread of burnt material (17m east-west) was encountered midway along Trench 1. The burnt material directly underlay the sod and had an average thickness of 0.35m, lensing out to 0.05m at the east and west. The eastern edge of the spread is clearly defined by a curvilinear feature, 1.7m wide, and a second curvilinear feature, 1.2m wide, was encountered 22m west of the burnt material. Compiled by: Caimin O'Brien. Date of upload: 23 May 2011

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