Furnace

The National Monuments Service's description

'Site 12', Cherryville was identified during monitoring as a series of circular patches containing both charcoal and burnt clay. A large number of miscellaneous features were found nearby, spread out over 70m. The entire group was classified as Site 12, but the features are of different dates. When excavated (Thaddeus C. Breen, Licence No. 01E0955: (www.excavations.ie), features 1-8 proved to be bowl furnaces. They ranged in diameter from 1.75m to 0.35m and in depth from 0.5m to 0.06m, but some had been truncated by the levelling of the site during topsoil-stripping. One was a figure-of-eight shape with two bowls, one deeper than the other. The fills of the furnaces included a charcoal-rich layer and a layer of red burnt clay, along with thicker layers of more mixed material. Lumps of slag were found in most of them. The only other finds were a piece of flint, possibly worked, and a sherd of pottery. Nearby was a ninth feature which resembled the others, but on excavation it proved to be shallow with a very irregular base. It does not seem to have been a furnace, but was probably contemporary with them, as it contained similar material. Of the miscellaneous features scattered over the site, the most important included two parallel shallow ditches 5m to the north-west of the bowl furnaces. They may have been the remains of a field boundary. One was 0.6m wide and 0.08m deep, the other was 1m wide and 0.7m deep. The latter cut through a circular pit. This pit and the second ditch both contained some sherds of medieval pottery. Another was an almost circular pit, 1.25m by 1m in diameter and 0.62m deep, near the eastern end of the site. It had straight sides and one side was walled by three narrow upright stone slabs. There were four fills, the lowermost of which was a small layer of charcoal-rich soil. It was situated near a series of recently backfilled ditches but its relationship to them, if any, was not clear. There were no finds. Over 300 sherds of medieval pottery were found on the site. Most of these were found in a series of discontinuous, and rather irregular, linear features in the central area of the site. These may represent traces of field boundary ditches. A pair of bronze tweezers was found in one of these. Further sherds of medieval pottery were found in some post-holes in the same area.

Compiled by: Gearóid Conroy

Date of upload: 23 November 2011