1980-94:0035 - ARMAGH: Corporation td, 48 Scotch Street, Armagh

A walled garden and yard, measuring 11x30m, were available for excavation prior to being developed as a carpark. The topsoil was removed mechanically from the entire site, but excavation concentrated on the N side where disturbance would be greatest. A range of pits, stakeholes and gullies and a small ditch were found cut into the subsoil, sealed by a mixed layer of mottled clay and brown loam which contained souterrain ware, animal bone, iron objects and a fragment of Greek porphyry. Finds of mortar, limestone and Armagh marble, usually utilised as building material, suggests a nearby masonry structure raised or demolished towards the end of the Early Christian period. Several bronze stick-pins and sherds of souterrain ware and medieval pottery were recovered from later features and deposits.
A ditch, c.4m wide and 1.5m deep, ran ENE-WSW across the site with an associated bank of clay upcast which was cut through by later pits. The N side of the ditch was edged with stones resting on the upper ditch fill, and the bank scaled spreads of stones, a fragment of human skull being found amongst one spread. Sherds of everted rim ware were found throughout the ditch fill, the upper fill consisting of a dark organic layer which also contained much animal bone.
These features were sealed by soil containing post-17th-century artefacts.