County: Louth Site name: DUNDALK: No. 55 Seatown
Sites and Monuments Record No.: N/A Licence number: 94E0090
Author: Kieran Campbell
Site type: Pit
Period/Dating: Late Medieval (AD 1100-AD 1599)
ITM: E 705228m, N 807510m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 54.006089, -6.394725
The site for a house is located at the east end of Seatown, 25m west of 'Seatown Castle', the bell tower of the Franciscan Friary founded c. 1245. The medieval suburb of Seatown occupied a low post-glacial ridge to the east of the walled 'Newtown of Dundalk' (Gosling 1993, 277–80).
Monitoring of the foundation trenches showed that below a depth of 0.2m of demolition rubble, natural sand and gravel covered most of the site. The only feature of archaeological interest on the site was a pit, 2m in diameter with shallow sides sloping to a maximum depth of 0.6m, located towards the centre of the site.
Loose mortar shale, presumably rubble from a demolished wall, formed the topmost 0.25m of fill. The greater part of the deposit consisted of dark soil with stone, charcoal, occasional small fragments of animal bone, oyster, mussel, and cockle shells, two sherds of medieval pottery and a fragment of a roof ridge tile. The pottery is most likely of local manufacture of 13th–15th-century date; the roof-tile is possibly of Cheshire origin.
Gosling, P. 1993 'From Dun Delca to Dundalk: the Topography and Archaeology of a Medieval Frontier Town, A.D. c. 1187-1700', Co. Louth Archaeol. Hist. J. 22, 3 (1991), 221–353.
6 St Ultan's, Laytown, Drogheda
