 This page is a brief record of events at the site during the summer of 1999, starting at the end of April.More detailed information can be found in the pages which follow.Photographs are by Patrick and Max.
Investigation of the so called "fish pond" led to the discovery of a stone built tide mill and evidence of its earlier evolution.
The photos below show the fish pond as seen from the monastic site
at high tide:
and at low tide:
Tom McErlean and his team were investigating the fish pond as part of an on-going archaeological survey of the shores of Strangford Lough when they came across unusually well constructed walls within the shore rocks at the eastern end of the fish pond. After some clearing and excavation it began to look like a small boat dock:
but further excavation uncovered millstones and a sandstone block with an orifice for a tide mill:
The lower millstone can be seen to have the wooden bearing in place, through which the shaft driving the upper stone would have passed.
The upper millstone was found broken below the lower stone, both having fallen to their present position from the milling room above. (no trace of the milling room remains).
The orifice is in the face of the large sandstone block, level with the third rung of the ladder.
An oak beam is visible in the water at the back of the pit, below the orifice.This beam is from a tree felled within one year of 787 AD. as was determined by Mike Baillie's dendrochronology team from Queens University Belfast:
A tide gauge was set up at the site:
Max measured to relate the orifice to the Gauge:
Finbar looks at the site with Tom:
Patrick provides the sheerlegs to lift out the millstones:
Below the millstones, large quantities of wattle were uncovered:
And three paddle blades, which were carefully removed for preservation:
Initially, resources were concentrated on excavating Trench 1, where the orifice discharged onto the paddle wheel.Trench 2, in the Nendrum car park had revealed only modern work and was quickly abandoned, to be followed by Trench 3 in the mill pond and its northern wall, this showed the wall's construction and determined the bed level of the pond at that point.Trench 4, to the west of the orifice, eventually became a major undertaking which uncovered not only the penstock connecting the pond to the orifice, but also sizeable worked timbers from earlier phases of the mill and what appears to be a wheel hub.At the same time Trench 1 was extended by a few metres to the east, in a seaward direction, in the hope of finding more paddles, a wheel hub, or perhaps a shaft bearing, but no new finds came to light in the Trench 1 extension.
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