Ballycastle children join archaeologists to investigate a lost building
A buried building in Ballycastle is giving children educated at home a chance to investigate local history alongside professional archaeologists.
The County Antrim excavation brings together Ballycastle Museum, Queen’s University Belfast and its community archaeology programme. Children and adults are helping uncover a structure shown on an eighteenth-century map but missing from later records.
A brick floor has emerged, while young participants have found slate, iron and coal. Parents told the BBC that working with people of different ages offered hands-on learning and new connections, with careers becoming easier to imagine.
The university’s community archaeology centre also supports Belfast’s Young Archaeologists’ Club, whose monthly meetings and field trips offer another route into exploring the past.
The building’s purpose remains uncertain, and the interviews do not measure educational gains. Finding an answer takes patience as well as enthusiasm.
That uncertainty is part of what the children are sharing: a real investigation, where their discoveries can help piece together the history of a place they know.
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