Habitation site, Portraine Demesne, Co. Dublin

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Settlement Sites

Habitation site, Portraine Demesne, Co. Dublin

Somewhere beneath the landscaped grounds of Portraine Demesne in north County Dublin, a settlement site lies exactly where it was left, undisturbed and unvisited, preserved in the earth by a decision made during the planning of a modern sewage scheme.

That is not an unusual fate for ancient sites in Ireland, but it is a quietly remarkable one: the ground here holds what may be the footprint of a Bronze Age round house, along with pits and an enclosure ditch, all contained within an area roughly 65 metres east to west and 90 metres north to south.

The site came to light not through chance discovery but through the bureaucratic machinery of infrastructure planning. Ahead of the Portrane, Donabate and Lusk Waste Water Treatment scheme, a geophysical survey was carried out under licence 08R029, followed by test excavation under licence 10E0121. Geophysical survey uses instruments to detect buried features without breaking ground, giving archaeologists a map of what lies below before a spade is lifted. What emerged from that process was a layered picture of occupation. The possible round house, a circular timber or earthen structure of the kind commonly built in Ireland during the Bronze Age, roughly 2500 to 500 BC, sits alongside features in the northern part of the site that are thought to date to the Iron Age or later, suggesting the area attracted settlement across several distinct periods. The findings were reported by McQuade in 2011 and compiled for the record by Christine Baker in 2015.

Because the site was preserved in situ rather than fully excavated, there is nothing visible at ground level to indicate what lies below. The demesne setting means access may be limited depending on the use of the land at any given time, and visitors should check locally before attempting to walk the area. For those interested in the archaeology of the north Dublin coastal fringe, the value here is less in what can be seen and more in knowing it is there, a compact record of long, repeated human presence sitting quietly beneath ordinary-looking ground.

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