1996:282 - DUNDALK: Priory and Hospital of St Leonard, Chapel Street, Louth

The development involved the conversion into apartments of an existing building, the former Viscount Limerick Grammar School, founded in 1725 and remodelled as the County Library in 1902. The building occupies part of the site of the priory and hospital of St Leonard, founded for the Fratres Cruciferi in the 1150s. Burials have been discovered during redevelopment work in the area on a number of occasions since 1911 and twice in recent years (Excavations 1991, 33–4; Excavations 1995, 65).

Archaeological investigations were undertaken on two open areas, west and east of the building, where resurfacing work is proposed. Two test-pits, measuring 1.8m x 0.6m and 1m x 0.6m, were excavated in the yard between the old library building and the surviving medieval undercroft of the priory. The ground was opened using a mini-digger and the test-pits thereafter were dug by hand. The uppermost 0.4m of deposits consisted of topsoil and metalled surfaces of eighteenth-century date or later. The loose fill below this level contained stone rubble, mortar, slate, shell and occasional fragments of human bone. This deposit continued to the limit of excavation at a depth of 0.8m.

A further two test-pits were located on the west side of the building where the lawn is to be resurfaced for car-parking. Topsoil was 0.3m thick, and in one test-pit overlay solid gravel and stone. The second test-pit exposed loose sandy fill with mortar, brick and some sherds of late nineteenth/early twentieth-century pottery. This fill covered a stone wall, aligned east-west, the top of which lay at a depth of 0.5m below the surface of the lawn. The test-pit was extended to recover the thickness of the wall but masonry was found to continue for a distance of 1.54m from the wall face and it seemed probable that the test-pit had been placed at a junction of walls. The wall can be identified as the north wall of a building shown at this location on both the Clanbrassil estate map of 1785 and the OS first-edition 6″ map of 1836. Further excavation would be required to establish whether this building was a surviving part of the priory. As it happens, the present development involves only the removal of topsoil, leaving the wall undisturbed.