What is recorded here

Chapelbride 4 held a long meandering drain and two corn-drying kilns on a sunny shelf above the M3 route. People may have grown grain there, dried it in heat and carried it through fields fifty metres wide. The drains still mark the shape of that lost labour.

Situated on a shelf on a NE and E-facing slope. Archaeological centre-line testing (04E1054) by D. Bayley (2005) at Testing Area 3 of Contract 5 of the M3 motorway (excavations.ie 2004:1223) identified archaeological material that was fully resolved (E003169) by D. Gallagher between November 2006 and March 2007 as Chapelbride 4 (excavations.ie 2006:1528). Few stratigraphic relationships could be established, but elements of a field system, a hut-site and another structure as well as a ring-ditch testify to prehistoric activity and two corn-drying kilns extend into the first millennium AD. Several discontinuous field drains were part of a field system. The principal feature was a WNW-ESE drain (Wth of top 0.82-1.3m; D 0.17-0.5m) that meandered across the excavated area in several sections (total L 100m plus), curving sometimes to the N and sometimes to the S. At least two N-S ditches approach this feature from the N. A NW-SE section of the long boundary cuts the SW side of the ring-ditch (ME016-076001-), and a feeder drain from the N also cuts the ring-ditch to enter the main drain. The fields could have been c. 50m wide (E-W), and two corn-drying kilns were probably associated with them. (O’Hara et al. 2009, 4-5) See the attached plan from O'Hara et al. (2009, fig. 7) Compiled by: Michael Moore Date of upload: 4 March 2022 O’Hara, R., Gallagher, D. and V. Ginn 2009 M3 Clonee – North of Kells, Contract 5 Final Report on the Archaeological Excavation of Chapelbride 4, Co. Meath. Licence: E003169. Unpublished report, Archaeological Consultancy Services

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