18th-Century Structures Found at Northern Ireland's Castle Ward

COUNTY DOWN, NORTHERN IRELAND—BBC News reports that a cobbled courtyard surrounded by traces of buildings with tiled and flagged floors were discovered during drainage work near Castle Ward, an eighteenth-century mansion overlooking an inlet on the eastern coast of Northern Ireland. A sink, fireplace, cellar, a network of stone-lined drains, glass bottles, ceramics, pottery, and animal bones were also found. “There was nothing on our maps that was showing anything to be there,” said National Trust archaeologist Malachy Conway. These structures may have been part of an earlier residence on the site that had been constructed in the early eighteenth century, and it is possible that they were demolished when the current mansion on the site was constructed in the 1760s, he explained. “They wouldn’t have wanted anything that would detract from the natural landscape,” Conway concluded. To read about traces of a castle beneath a nineteenth-century retreat on a tiny island, go to "Inside a Medieval Gaelic Castle."