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AR01055_EMAP_Gazetteer_of_Sites_4-2_10.pdf - The Heritage ...

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Kildare<br />

Pollardstown, Co. Kildare<br />

Early Medieval Settlement Enclosure.<br />

Grid Ref: N775151 (27750/21510)<br />

SMR No: N/A<br />

Excavation Licence: E000098<br />

Excavation Duration/Year: 1972.<br />

Site Director: T. Fanning (Office <strong>of</strong> Public Works)<br />

<strong>The</strong> site consisted <strong>of</strong> a double-banked enclosure, with an intervening ditch, set on an esker<br />

ridge. Gravel quarrying had destroyed a portion <strong>of</strong> the site, but from earlier maps it was<br />

estimated to have measured 70m by 80m (Fig. 190). Future quarrying threatened to destroy<br />

the entire site, thus occasioning a large-scale excavation <strong>of</strong> the remaining features.<br />

<strong>The</strong> nature <strong>of</strong> the destruction meant that no structural features were discovered in the<br />

interior. An occupation layer (0.2m deep), abutting the enclosure bank however, was<br />

excavated. This was found to include animal bone, charcoal, and a couple <strong>of</strong> fragments <strong>of</strong><br />

iron slag. A number <strong>of</strong> iron artefacts were also recovered including two stirrups, an<br />

arrowhead, a buckle, three iron rods, and six nails. <strong>The</strong> potentially militaristic nature <strong>of</strong> parts<br />

<strong>of</strong> this assemblage, and its potential late date (the stirrups and arrowhead were dated by the<br />

excavator to the twelfth/thirteenth centuries) would suggest that this site may have either<br />

been re-occupied during these centuries, or may have been constructed at this time as an<br />

Anglo-Norman ringwork.<br />

Fig. 190: Plan <strong>of</strong> Pollardstown, Co. Kildare (after Fanning 1973-4, 252).<br />

Reference:<br />

Fanning, T. 1973–1974. Excavation <strong>of</strong> a ringfort at Pollardstown, Co. Kildare. Journal <strong>of</strong> the Kildare<br />

Archaeological and Historical Society, 15(3), 251–61.<br />

391

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