Stable, Scurlockstown, Co. Meath

Co. Meath |

Estate Features

Stable, Scurlockstown, Co. Meath

What survives of a medieval stable at Scurlockstown in County Meath is not visible at ground level at all.

After excavation, the entire structure and its associated features were reburied beneath a white geotextile membrane and a covering of topsoil, preserving the archaeology in place while returning the surface to something unremarkable. Yet below that ordinary-looking ground lies a remarkably legible building, its internal arrangements still clear enough to reconstruct the daily rhythms of a working stable from several centuries ago.

Archaeological testing and excavation, carried out under licence 01E0316 and published by Hayden in 2003, revealed the foundations of a rectangular structure measuring approximately thirteen metres by seven metres, its walls a single course of clay-bonded stone between 0.6 and 0.9 metres wide. The entrance in the northwest wall, 1.6 metres across and without surviving door jambs, was approached by a cobbled path of the same width that ran straight through the building and may have continued out through the southeast wall, giving the stable a thoroughfare quality. To the north of that path, three horse stalls were defined not by stone partitions but by slot-trenches cut directly into the clay floor, each measuring roughly 3.5 metres by 1.6 metres. A paved area occupied the south corner. Outside to the northwest, a small paved yard drained into a covered channel, which in turn fed into a larger drain running to the north of the building. The pottery recovered, principally Leinster cooking ware and some Dublin glazed ware, along with horseshoe nails found in the overlying ploughsoil, helps date and characterise the site as part of a medieval manorial complex. The stable lay about forty metres southwest of an associated tower house, a fortified residential structure typical of medieval Meath's Anglo-Norman settlements. Beneath the stable floor, earlier pits and gullies also contained Leinster cooking ware, and a substantial ditch running southeast to northwest just north of the building predates the stable entirely, its fill later reused as the bed for the stable's own drainage channel. Further structures were identified to the southwest and southeast, suggesting the stable was one element in a broader yard or service complex rather than an isolated building.

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