EMAP_Progress_Reports_2009_2.pdf - The Heritage Council

Londonderry
Big Glebe, Co. Londonderry
Early Medieval Raised Enclosure.
Grid Ref: C76033405 (27603/43405)
SMR No: LDY 002:003
Excavation Licence: N/A
Excavation Duration/Year: 1976.
Site Director: J.C. Lynn (Historic Monuments Branch, Department of the
Environment (N.I.)).
The site consisted of a mound (20m diameter at the top; and 7m high), set on a low ridge.
The mound was enclosed within an oval ditch with a diameter of 70m at its widest point.
Complete excavation of the site was required as it was to be destroyed under a farm
improvement scheme.
Prior to excavation the mound was assumed to have been an Anglo-Norman motte, however,
upon excavation it was found that the site was of an earlier date. Excavation of the site
revealed that the lower 5m or 6m of the mound had been constructed in one event. Evidence
for this was found in the form of large curving ramp revetted with stone, which was up to 3m
in height (Fig. 198).
The original occupation layer was enclosed by a dry-stone wall of boulders around the edge
of the mound top. The burnt outline of a wicker-walled roundhouse (7m in diameter) was
located in the centre of the mound top (Fig. 199). A smaller structure to the north of this
house may have constituted the rear room of a ‘figure-of-eight’ house, but modern
disturbance in the intervening area made this impossible to ascertain. The finds from the
main structure consisted of sherds of souterrain ware, two bronze pins and a quernstone.
Radiocarbon dates were obtained from the charcoal (see below).
The mound was subsequently heightened again, using the earlier perimeter wall as a
revetment. A souterrain was excavated into the mound at this period. The structural remains
from this phase were badly damaged by later cultivation, but there appeared to have been at
least one sub-rectangular building which was either stone-built, or partially stone-built.
Souterrain ware was also recovered from this phase of occupation.
Fig. 198: Stone-revetted ramp at Big Glebe, Co. Londonderry (courtesy T. E. McNeill, QUB).
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