Open Day 2014 - Saturday 24 May, Monea Castle, Co. Fermanagh

We are holding an open day for the excavations at Monea Castle this Saturday, 24th May. This is open to anyone who is interested in finding out more about the castle and what we have discovered to date. 

Please Note: Parking for the open day is available at Monea Parish Church which is a 10 min walk to the castle. Please follow signs on the day.

We look forward to meeting everyone and sharing our excavation! The more the merrier!

The future of aerial photography!

This is what the future looks like!

Yesterday (Thursday) Gavin Donaghy from Irish Archaeological Research visited the site and very kindly took aerial film videos and photos of Monea with a drone. It was a mad kind of helicopter linked to some very high spec equipment!

Gavin with cool goggles that let you see what the drone is filming

The results are fantastic! Below is one of the many amazing images Gavin took of the castle and our excavation site. 

Photo courtesy of Gavin Donaghy (Irish Archaeological Research)

We could see the filming in real time (by use of goggles and video screens). This allowed us to look right down into the castle and it gives us some great shots of the excavation cuttings in progress around the castle.

Monitoring the filming of aerial footage

We would like to thank Gavin very much for giving up his time to come out and do this for us. Further details and more photos can be found at the IAR webpage (http://www.irisharchaeologicalresearch.com/) and on IAC’s facebook page. Fintan is also posting up the odd comment and photo from this excavation on his twitter account (https://twitter.com/WalshFintan).

More next week.

Day 7 - Stones, stones, stones.........

Stones stones everywhere but not a building in sight (except that is for the big castle looming over us of course). The cuttings around the southern end of the castle are producing a huge amount of stone rubble which we are trying to get to the bottom of.............literally!

Camilla excavating Cutting 4

Cutting 5

Meanwhile we had another very enjoyable school visit and this time we are having some art classes too. The children here have been either drawing their favourite feature of the castle.

Class visit - art corner ;-)

We would like to thank our volunteers from the Clogher Historical Society who finished a three-day stint today and did some great work this week!! 

Enthusiasts from Clogher Historical Society lending a hand

Week Two and the sun came out for us

We are a bit behind in our daily posts so here is an update of what has been happening since the latest post last Thursday..

On Friday we had our first school visit which was a great success.

School visit - everyone got a chance to dig!

This is the first of at least eight organised visits of schools from the Monea area. The children had a tour of the castle, a tour of the excavations and then broke into groups and they had a go at digging, sieving and surveying.

On Monday we were joined by volunteers from the Clogher Historical Society who got stuck in straight away and made light work of the sod removal in Cutting 3.

Volunteers from the Clogher Historical Society in Cutting 3

Nick Brannon, the lead archaeologist for the project, 
was on hand for an excellent photo opportunity.

The sun came out properly (finally) on Tuesday and we had another productive day. Deborah from the Clogher volunteers had the best find of the day, a musket ball, found in Cutting 6

Deborah from the Clogher Historical Society and her find!

Musket ball!

We also had our second school group on Tuesday morning. Here’s Christina showing the children some examples of things that you might find on a site. The best suggestion we got for this object from the class was “a unicorn horn”! 

Site talk during school visit

Day Three - Cutting 1 and 6

A group of enthusiastic volunteers from the Cavanaleck Community Association spent much of the day on site braving the rainy conditions. After a tour of the castle the group got involved in a bit of digging and de-sodding in Cutting 6. 

Volunteers from Cavanaleck Community Association at Cutting 6

By the time the sun had come out in the afternoon the sod was off and the volunteers were already starting to fill the finds tray. A great day was had by all involved.

Meanwhile Cutting 1 is looking very interesting.     

Cutting 1 following removal of sod

Day Two - Cutting 4 and 5 showing potential

Day 2 was a wet one. Despite this we are making good progress. 

Cutting 4 is looking good and there definitely seems to be a wall here with collapse either side. Also the soils around this are quite charcoal-rich so we seem to have come down onto a good occupation level here.

Cutting 4 following removal of sod

Cutting 5 is producing a good range of finds from the initial clean back (after the sod was removed). Lots of clay pipe fragments (probably 17^th century) are popping up as well as glazed and un-glazed pottery! Its safe to say that the item in the top left of the finds tray might be a bit more recent though…

Finds tray from clean back in Cutting 5

First Week on site at Monea Castle

First day on site and everything is going grand. 

Christina, Camilla, Marie-Therese and Tony started de-sodding and digging Cuttings 4 and 5 just south of the castle and things are already looking promising!. 

We may have the remnants of a wall in Cutting 4 as suggested in the geophysical survey while a number of finds have been recovered from the topsoil in Cutting 5 including clay pipe fragments, slag, iron nails, and pottery fragments. 

Looking forward to more interesting discoveries tomorrow.