County: Down Site name: NEWTONARDS: Castle Gardens, in grounds of 12 Court Square
Sites and Monuments Record No.: SMR 6:19 Licence number: —
Author: Declan P. Hurl, Environment Service, Historic Monuments and Buildings
Site type: Ecclesiastical enclosure
Period/Dating: —
ITM: E 749119m, N 873796m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 54.590420, -5.692612
This site was 30m south of the investigation carried out within the cloister of the Dominican priory in 1992, which uncovered a medieval cemetery (Excavations 1992, 13). The 1994 excavation eventually consisted of a single trench, 13m x 4m, and lasted five weeks.
A ditch, 2m wide and 0.75m deep, ran east-west across the south of the site; a gully, at least 9m long, 1.86m wide and up to 0.7m deep, ran into it from the north. These contained wooden planks, leather shoes and sherds of coarse and green-glazed medieval pottery. A later ditch, 1.6m wide, 0.3m deep and again running east-west, cut into the upper fills of the early ditch; the lower fills of this later feature contained medieval pottery, but its upper fill also contained post-medieval pottery and pipe stems.
Cut into the upper fill of the gully in the north of the site was a small, probably medieval grave containing the skeleton of a child, 6–7 years old, supine and extended, oriented east-west.
In the very north of the trench was a cut, U-shaped in section, 1m wide and 0.4m deep, filled with large stones sealed with gravel and sand. Just south of it was a more vague feature, 0.8m wide and up to 0.3m deep, filled with smaller stones and coarse loam. A 14th-century silver coin, possibly residual, was found in this feature, and sherds of green-glazed medieval pottery were found in both.
Between these features and the ditch was a heat-cracked stone slab, 1.12m long and 0.75–1.1m wide, apparently associated with a pit, 1m in diameter, filled with charcoal and ash to the west, and a square pit, 1m x 1m, containing stone slabs, some vertical, to the east. There were accumulations of scorched soil in this complex, which was post-medieval.
Running east-north-east/west-south-west, near the north of the site, was a post-medieval stone-lined drain, mortared at the top and lintelled, with a cobbled floor; it was 1.35m wide and 0.6m deep.
This will be published, together with the 1992 excavation, in Ulster Journal of Archaeology.
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