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Sites and Monuments Record · Ireland

Charcoal-making site

Gunnocks, County Meath, Ireland

Ordnance Survey six-inch map, 2nd edition (1888–1915) covering the location of Charcoal-making site, Gunnocks, County Meath, with a pin at the register's coordinates
Ordnance Survey six-inch map, 2nd edition (1888–1915), covering this location. Courtesy of the National Library of Scotland. The pin is ours, placed from the register's coordinates.

The record

Townland
Gunnocks
County
Meath
Country
Ireland
First-edition OS map
Not indicated
Latest-edition OS map
Not indicated
Coordinates
53.41980, -6.42223
SMR number
ME051-058001-

Slide toward Today to fade the historical sheet and see the modern map underneath.

David Rumsey Map Collection, Stanford Libraries

4 historical maps cover this location, the earliest the 1790 map "Composite: Ireland." (David Rumsey Map Collection, Stanford Libraries).

Historical maps covering this location

  • 1790 · Composite: Ireland. (David Rumsey Map Collection, Stanford Libraries)
  • 1799 · Ireland. (David Rumsey Map Collection, Stanford Libraries)
  • 1811 · Ireland. (David Rumsey Map Collection, Stanford Libraries)
  • 1891 · Ireland 16 (David Rumsey Map Collection, Stanford Libraries)

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This record in the National Monuments Service's Historic Environment Viewer ↗

The National Monuments Service's description

Archaeological monitoring (15E0577) by P. Duffy, D. Bayle and J. Whitaker of topsoil stripping over a large area (c. 92 ha.) conducted intermittently between Dec. 2015 and October 2018 uncovered 37 locations of potential archaeological importance (excavations.ie 2016:051). Each of these was further investigated by the same archaeologists under different licences. At Site 34 two pits of late Neolithic date (ME051-058----) were excavated (18E0143) c. 15m NNW of this linear pit (dims 0.84m x 0.52m; D 0.09m) that was recorded under the same licence.
This pit was filled with a single layer of grey clay and charcoal with inclusions of burnt bone and decayed stone. Two parallel N-S sections of linear cuts (L 1.28m; Wth 0.37m; D 0.06m; L 8.3m; Wth 1.6m; D 0.18m) c. 2m apart and filled with yellow/brown clays were just 5m to the NE and were probably drains on either side of field boundary. A sample from the charcoal-pit provided a C14 date of 547-641 cal. AD (FTMC-BD08-10), while a sample from the longer ditch yielded a date of 658-775 cal. AD (FTMC-BD08-13), demonstrating that they are closely contemporary and date to the early medieval period. There were some undiagnostic burnt bones that are likely to be animal, and some unburnt bone of a medium to large mammal were also present. (Duffy et. al. 2021, 24).

Compiled by: Michael Moore

Date of upload; 26 April, 2023

Duffy, P., Fairhead, S. & F. Fleeshouven 2021 Final Excavation Report for Sites 3-37, Clonee, Portan, Gunnocks, Co. Meath. Multiple licences, Unpublished report, Irish Archaeological Consultancy

Nearby in the register

Other entries of the same register within about three miles of this one, by straight line.

Sites and Monuments Record data: National Monuments Service, Government of Ireland, licensed under CC BY 4.0. Record text is reproduced unchanged. National Monuments Service, Government of Ireland · CC BY 4.0
All Charcoal-making site in Meath All County Meath records All Ireland Heritage registers Historical markers (US)National Register of Historic Places (US)
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