2024:398 - Sligo Hospice, Rathquarter, Sligo, Sligo

The development consisted of the construction of a new part single storey/part 2 storey 12-bed residential Hospice Facility extension adjoining Connaught Road, including associated support accommodation. Refurbishment and minor demolitions of the existing hospice facility including existing house and inpatient areas to become support accommodation. The development involved
the construction of an undercroft car park, reconfiguration of existing associated car park, extensive landscape scheme to west and south and general minor associated works. The new extension was within the curtilage of a protected structure.
Both the Archaeological impact assessment undertaken by Fadó Archaeology and the relevant planning conditions attached to the permission for the development, requested pre-development archaeological test trenching with follow up archaeological monitoring as required.
The site was tested via seven machine-dug archaeological test trenches of varying lengths, but spaced at roughly 10m intervals across the footprint of the development, access roads and service lines, with the work carried out on 22 April 2024.
It was considered possible that the eastern boundary of the site, delimited by a stone wall, might reflect the line of the 17th-century town defences as recorded on Luttrell’s map of 1689. No such evidence was recovered, suggesting that the line of the defences, if they survive, runs elsewhere in this part of the town. The only other evidence of note was the line of the scarping, running along the western side of the subject site, associated with the construction of Connaughton Road in the 1980s.