2023:887 - Athlone Town Walls, Westmeath

Athlone Town Wall is a National Monument (WM029-042020) which is in the ownership of Westmeath County Council. Conservation works have been undertaken over several years with support from the Irish Walled Towns Network and the Community Monuments Fund.

In 2020, the outer section of St Mary’s Wall (Site/Section 5 following the convention created in the Athlone Town Wall Conservation Plan (Oxford Archaeology 2005)) was repaired following recommendations by Jason Bolton (Bolton 2020; Giacometti 2021).

In 2021, the inner section (Site/Section 4) was partially rebuilt, repointed and rendered, vegetation clearance was carried out at Section 6, and conservation works were undertaken at Section 8 (Barry 2021). No works apart from preparatory reports were undertaken in 2022 (Barry 2022).

In 2023, further works, funded by the CMF, were undertaken at Sections 9a and 9b on the north-east bastion (Barry 2024). Sections 9c and 10 will be addressed in future but the corner of 9b and 9c was repaired as it falls within one of the gardens. The work was initiated in early September as it required vegetation clearance. Scaffolding was erected to allow access to the top of the walls, which permitted a GPS survey of the capping level prior to the conservation work but in Section 9a, after the removal of the cement and glass mix to allow for improved flaunching.
Both sections were repointed. The corner of 9a and 9b was in poor repair and had previously been precariously stablised with a concrete block and brick wall. The small wall and loose stone was removed. The base was found to sit on a concrete beam. Either side of this was checked for any archaeological material and it was then removed. The void was 0.5m deep and was filled with local stone and the corner was then built up to a boundary garden wall with same. Large quoins, such as those at 9b and 9c corner were not used. The repair will be observable. As the 2004 trench (00E0275 ext., Byrne), near section 8, reached 1.5m to the base of the wall, the 2023 work did not come close to the earliest phases of the wall at 9a/b. The height of the wall in Section 9b and c was approximately 43m OD.

As in 2021, some dressed stone was observed in the wall and care was taken not to occlude the detail with repointing.

See also 2021:210, 2020:385 and 2024:860.