Kiln - corn-drying

The National Monuments Service's description

Two corn-drying kilns, described as ovens, were built into the mound of Tomb 12. This feature is NW of the chamber and consists of a flue (L 6m; Wth 1m) running E-W but curving to the N, with a fire-pit at either end. The oven was probably on the N side of the flue where there is a gap in the walling but the oven itself was destroyed by a pit (dims 2.6m x 1.8m; D 1m)cut from the surviving top of the mound behind a kerbstone. No primary material was associated with the oven but a redeposited barbed-and-tanged arrowhead was recovered from the pit and a redeposited flint scraper was found on the surviving surface of the tomb mound. The ovens post-date the levelling of the mound which occurred in the first millennium AD. They are not conserved. (Eogan 2012, 181-2)

True location: ITM (669566, 773506)

Compiled by: Michael Moore

Date of upload: 26 November 2013
Amended: 18 September 2020

See the attached illustrations:
_1 Early medieval features, from Knowth 5, Fig. 4:1
_2 plan of kilns, from Kowth 5, Fig. 5:5 (left)

References

Eogan, G. 2012 Excavations at Knowth 5: the archaeology of Knowth in the first and second millennia AD. Dublin. Royal Irish Academy.