1993:042 - NEWTONARDS: 1, 2 & 3 Court Sq., Down

The excavations took place prior to the development of a site located at the junction of Castle St. and Court Sq. and were carried out on behalf of Environment Service, Historic Monuments and Buildings, DoE (NI). The site is roughly rectangular in shape, measuring a maximum of 30m x 13m with its long axis running north-north-east/south-south-west. Two machine cut trenches were examined, the first running perpendicular to the line of Castle St. and the second, running parallel to it.

The excavations showed that there were four main phases. Firstly there were slight traces of what can very loosely be described as pre-Plantation activity, which were overlain by the first landscaping episode in the town, that carried out by Sir Hugh Montgomery around 1650 and represented by the deposition of a thick layer of sandy silts and the construction of cobbled areas in the old foreshore area. There then followed a second phase of landscaping and associated building construction, this time by the Londonderry family, who were responsible for the deposition of the grey soils, the construction of house walls and finally a phase of 19th-century refurbishment, when large quantities of gravel were deposited in the houses in order to raise the floor levels. Therefore, although little of medieval date was uncovered or indeed any direct evidence for Plantation settlement, the sequence of events revealed in the sections clearly reflects the written histories of the town. However, what may be more important is the fact that due to the nature of the development of Newtownards, that is, the redeposition of large quantities of soil over extensive areas of the town, the earlier deposits may simply have been buried, and due to the extensive overburden, may have escaped destruction by later development.

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