Beaubec Excavations

The Mahon family, all eight of them, arrived at Bey More today to volunteer their services and began excavating a cutting across the medieval moat. The cutting will forever more be known as the ‘Mahon Cutting’. Thank you guys! Famous Meath archaeologist Kieran Campbell also paid us a welcome visit and identified imported post medieval Spanish pottery amongst our finds today, including Spanish olive jars and Portuguese redware. He has sent us on some reconstructed drawings of these beautiful pots. We have all been working our way through habitation layers that are related to the Pearson house so it was a real treat today to have John Mc Cullen share with the team his superb research on the Pearson family with their house and gardens. He also gave the team a copy of his paper, beautifully produced by Grace Mc Cullen with reconstruction drawings by Peter McCullen. We were sorry to say goodbye to DCU’s finest, graduates John Marshall and Adam Healy who worked very hard this week and with whom we had  a lot of fun. They have passed the baton over to Oliver, Mary and Bronagh. No pressure!

Mick Mongey (left) discusses recent pottery discoveries with Kieran Campbell. Kieran identified the sherd he is holding as Spanish Olive Jar. Geraldine and John listen in.

Deirdre and Tom (alias Fred Flintstone) are excited by their discovery of a flint scraper. Catherine (right) looks up from bottoming the ditch that runs beneath the wall.

Three quarters of the Mahon family at work in cutting W, now forever known as the Mahon cutting. Co-director Matthew and his assistant Sadie Rose admire their technique.

John lectures to the volunteers about the Pearson family (Photo: Grace McCullen).

Everyone received a beautifully illustrated and presented copy of John’s resent research on the Pearson family (Photo: Grace McCullen).

The Fingal Independent carries the news about the virtual tour of St Doulagh’s.

The excavation at the end of Day 5 (Drone photo by Anthony Murphy).

Today we began to dismantle the Pearson Avenue to get down to the much awaited yellow medieval habitation layer that lies below the darker modern deposits. Patches of yellow are appearing in most of the squares . A lintelled drain was carefully followed on its journey
through the building on its way to the moat. This drain is running through the medieval walls and our mission now is to determine whether it was put in later or integrated into the construction of the medieval walls when they were first built. With charcoal deposits occurring more frequently at this level Penny Johnson has been ramping up the number of samples she is taking for environmental evidence. She still found time to direct a tutorial on sample processing to our UCD volunteers. Bea and Anelia have identified a further eleven fossils and have been keeping our on-site fossil man, Mick Mongey, on his toes. Aidan Giblin and Mick Mongey have been all over the news this week with the launch of the Resurrecting Monuments pioneering ‘virtual tour of St Doulagh’s church’ in north county Dublin. To access the virtual tour go to https://www.fingal.ie/digital-heritage-projects

The newly uncovered drain runs towards last years section. The Cistercians loved their drains.

Penny giving a tutorial on sampling to our UCD volunteers

Catriona and Bernie have been washing and cataloguing the large quantity of finds coming into the finds office

Penny sampled charcoal from the top of the lintelled drained. She found peas, beans and grain.

Sadie Rose from Waterford (second from right) is very keen on archaeology. She did her school project on the excavations at Beaubec. She is pictured here with Anne, our host, Lily and Sadie Rose’s mother (on the right).

The excavation at the end of Day 4 (Drone photo by Anthony Murphy).

Alex McCullen took this artful shot of the sun low in the sky at the end of Day 4.

The team worked hard all day in the hot sun in search of the medieval levels of Beaubec farm. The Pearson avenue was expertly trowelled by Treasa Kerrigan who generously volunteered her time today. Thank you, Treasa! She uncovered a long section of the medieval farm building wall which had actually been reused to form the road surface to the eighteenth century avenue. Craig and Alex have been expertly managing the spoil heap and Craig even uncovered a stone wall in the process. A number of worked flint tools were found by Molly and Tom which reminds us of the prehistoric communities at Bey More who built the pit circle. Mary, John  and Adam have been patiently working their way down through the centuries and have now come down on the medieval walls in their square. Matt and John began planning newly uncovered structures and drawing sections. Anthony Murphy came to record it all in the afternoon with his magical drone.

Link to Anthony Murphy’s video of Beaubec on the first day of excavation. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSQBdNurQfQ

Most of the diggers present on Day 2. Thank you everyone.

Billy Sines, who has been a part of archaeological team since Newgrange Farm in 2018, visited the site today. He now finds himself in the ranks of professional archaeology.

Digging and recording on Day 3 (Photo: Mick Mongey).

Donal (left) negotiates the spoil heap that is immaculately maintained by Craig.

John, archaeologist and artist in residence, records the eastern section face of Cutting A

Co-director Matthew Stout recording the post-medieval layers at Beaubec.

Treasa and Craig towelling at the start of the day (Photo: Mick Mongey).

Treasa Cody’s trowelled masterpiece in Cutting V6.

Before and after, spot the difference: At the start (top) and end (bottom) of day 3. Note the immaculately trowelled Pearson avenue in V6 and the sods removed in cutting V12 due to the hard work of Donal and Leo (Drone photo: Anthony Murphy).

Nature watch: Crinoid fossils discovered by Bea McCullen (Photo: Grace McCullen).

It’s hard to believe it’s only the second day on site. Everyone has settled into a steady rhythm of digging, shovelling and barrowing. The roadies have done an excellent job erecting  all the gazebos which will shelter us and the tools in the changeable conditions that is all part of an Irish summer. Well done! Sod is off in all the squares and we are working our way through an early modern layer with fragments of blackware, stoneware and china filling the finds trays. The Pearson avenue is on view again with its stone lined edges and cobbled surface. In some squares, we are already coming down on the medieval walls and some fragments of medieval floor tiles, medieval potsherds (including a rimsherd which is probably French Saintonge). What a heavenly moment on site when Jason came down with a tray of scrumptious, freshly made chocolate chip cookies, which vanished in seconds before they could be photographed. Thank you Jason! Conor Brady paid us a visit and brought his sieve which he kindly loans to us each year. Our archaeologist/artist in residence, John Sunderland, began his creative journey today.

Our new tool shed for the site equipment.

Uncovering the eighteenth century avenue.

Jason’s empty tray, the chocolate chip cookies are all gone.

Bea and Anelia discovered an ancient fossil when trowelling in the cuttings.

Mick found a rimsherd of possible French Saintonge pottery.

Anthony found an elegant knife.

Alex revealed the medieval wall.

Aidan, Áine and Anthony (Photo: Grace McCullen).

Mary directs John and Adam, two newcomers both proud graduates of DCU (Photo: Grace McCullen).

Andy, Craig and Alex, the cool dudes cutting.

Planning the day ahead with Geraldine, Mick and Morris (Photo: Grace McCullen).

The large crew (we count 22) at work in the damp afternoon.

Site co-director Geraldine with Conor Brady of DKIT.

A beautiful frog and a beautiful frog photo by Mick Mongey.

Over 36 volunteers and a dozen or so visitors to the site were on hand to witness the turning of the first sod. Barney McAdam, who farms the field, is one of the oldest residents in the area and he performed the first-day duties. John McCullen (landowner) and Geraldine Stout (co-director) gave brief addresses and then we were off to the races. If you have any doubts about how much work was done in the first day, just compare the before and after photos taken by drone photographer extraordinaire Anthony Murphy. It was a beautiful day and a perfect start to the excavation.

Barney McAdam turns the first sod to launch the beginning of the 2021 season at Beaubec (photo Grace McCullen).

John and Barney with co-directors Matthew and Geraldine Stout (photo Grace McCullen).

John McCullen (left) welcomes the team of nearly forty volunteers to Beaubec (photo Grace McCullen).

The work begins (photo Grace McCullen).

After the morning ceremonies were over, everyone headed out to begin the dig (Drone photo by Anthony Murphy).

Morning and evening before-and-after photos of the excavation (Drone photo by Anthony Murphy).

As we get ready for the start of the 2021 season at Beaubec, here is a preview of John McCullen’s article on the Pearson’s of Bey More. John, historian and our affable host, hopes to place this article in the next issue of the Journal of the Old Drogheda Society. The foundations of the Pearson House can still be seen to the north-east of the grange. The avenue to this mansion cut through the medieval farm.

The third and final season of excavations at Beaubec has just received the go-ahead from our principal funders FBD Trust and the Kilsharvan Community Council. This year’s dig will begin on Monday, 5 July 2021 and continue for four weeks (excepting weekends), concluding on Friday 30 July 2021. We dig from 9 to 5. The main theatre of operations will be the long agricultural building whose extent was established in Seasons 1 and 2. The success of the last two seasons was only possible because of the enthusiasm of the numerous volunteers who worked at Beaubec. Please join us again in 2021. Contact matthew.stout@dcu.ie

Louise Walsh, Drogheda journalist and mother of excavation stalwart Comhall Ferriter, published a piece on our Late Neolithic date in the Irish Independent of 30 March 2021. We thank Louise for her continuing interest in our excavation.

https://m.independent.ie/irish-news/news/bru-na-boinne-links-to-site-where-medieval-monks-made-bread-40254629.html

Readers of this blog will know that the Beaubec Excavations team were recently awarded a Radio Carbon date from the RIA/QUB (see 4 December 2020). The result is just in, the envelope please: the pit circle dates to 2456–2208BC! We can now confirm that there is a Late Neolithic horizon at Beaubec uniting this part of the Boyne Valley with those monuments found in the summer of discoveries in 2018 and similar Neolithic circles found in Laytown/Bettystown during the Celtic Tiger years.

This exciting news has just arrived and we thank everyone in the 14CHRONO Centre for their hard work during these difficult times.

The calibration curve for the Beaubec pit KF3

Plans and sections of pits comprising a small portion of the Beaubec Pit Circle now dated to c.2333BC

Our thanks to the Royal Irish Academy and Queen’s University Belfast for the award of this C14 date.

John Creedon came to Beaubec last July and the programme RTÉ made that day aired on Sunday, 14 March 2021 at 6:30 PM. You can now see it on the RTE player. The entire series is well worth a watch, but the segment on Beaubec is in the second episode at 9:00 minutes, enjoy!

https://www.rte.ie/player/series/creedon-s-atlas-of-ireland/SI0000005960?epguid=IH000402197

Filming last July on Creedon’s Atlas of Ireland (photo: Mick Mongey).

John Creedon discusses the upcoming series with Damien O’Reilly on CountryWide from 28:00. Co-Director of the Beaubec excavations, Geraldine Stout, is on the same show at 33:00.