Settlement cluster in Cookstown (ratoath By., Cookstown Par.)

In 1291 the church of Ratoath was granted to the Augustinian Abbey of St Thomas in Dublin (DU018-020051-), and its register of deeds records a William Cocus (Cook), from whom the townland is named. In 1333 Philip FitzWilliam held three carucates in Kokeston (Orpen 1921, 76). At the suppression of the monastery in 1540 James Baret and Thomas Stephyns are mentioned in relation to Cokestown (White 1943, 32, 35). According to the Civil Survey (1656) David Russel owned 146 acres at Cookstown in 1641 and on the premises was a ‘stone house, houses of office and cabins’ (Simington 1940, 97), but they are not represented on the Down Survey (1656-8) maps. Later in the century Cookstown was owned by Sir Anthony Molady, and Richard Morgan was the leaseholder (Loeber et al. 2001, 80), but Molady forfeited the property because of his support for King James II in 1691 and it passed to a Thomas Carter, whose family held it into the 19th century. The stone house of the Civil Survey may have been c. 100m to the W of the excavation where the only farm cluster in the townland is represented on the 1836 edition of the OS 6-inch map and which still functions as the centre of an operating farm. The excavated structures were probably part of the ancillary buildings of this property and consist of a house, a forge and another building. (Cluterbuck 2009a, 30-5) 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 extant 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 31-2) 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. The latter (int. dims 6m plus N-S; 4m E-W) was defined by slot-trenches (Wth 0.57-0.7m; D 0.2-0.4m) packed with stones, and it was truncated at N by a later manifestation of the laneway. At the centre were 18 stake-holes, which may have supported a table or bench, but there was no evidence of a hearth or an entrance, which must have been in the destroyed N wall. Externally, the slot-trenches for the walls were separated by a berm (Wth 0.5-2m) from a drainage channel (max. Wth 1.7m; max. D 0.65m) on the W side, and this channel is fed from the WSW by a channel (Wth 1.3m; max. D 0.9m; L 35m) running from the interior of the rectangular annexe that is attached to the relict rath. This channel did not function long as it is cut by the drain defining the E edge of the annexe. Between the channel and the lane and c. 10m W of Strucutre III a small rectangular area (int. dims 6m x c. 5.4m plus) defined by a wide fosse (Wth 1m; D 0.27m) seems to have been a raised garden plot. Leinster cooking ware and coarse Dublin ware are present in the primary fills of these drains, but the upper layers include fragments of clay pipes as well as Devon gravel-tempered ware, indicating a final closing in the seventeenth or eighteenth century. The structures, however, where defunct by the end of the fourteenth century. (Clutterbuck 2009, 33-6) See the attached illustrations from Clutterbuck (2009, figs 17, 18, 19) ME039-009_2 Annotated site plan; ME039-009004-_1 Structures I, II; ME039-009004-_2 Strucutre III