County: Louth Site name: DROGHEDA: Bachelors Lane
Sites and Monuments Record No.: N/A Licence number: 95E0023
Author: Kieran Campbell
Site type: Historic town
Period/Dating: Multi-period
ITM: E 709096m, N 775237m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 53.715393, -6.347221
Pre-development testing, monitoring and limited excavation took place at various times during the year on a site for a carpark on the north side of Bachelors Lane. The carpark was part of a scheme to convert an early 19th-century warehouse, the Calendar Building, into apartments.
The site consisted of an overgrown garden, 21m x 18m, raised 3.5m above the lane and separated from the lane by a high retaining wall of several building phases. Following the excavation by hand of four test-pits, each 1m square, a depth of approximately 1.5m of post-medieval garden soil was removed by machine to a level dated to the late 16th/early 17th century. The earliest phase of the retaining wall, 3.4m in height, was dated to this period. Further test-pits showed that the remaining 2m of ground, down to the road surface of the lane, consisted of buildup during the medieval and early post-medieval periods. It was decided to retain the site at this level and install the carpark 2m above Bachelors Lane with a ramp entrance through an adjacent derelict site.
A right-angled clay-bonded stone wall, 0.95m thick and aligned 5.4m north-south by 3.8m east-west, protruded into the north-east corner of the site and contained fifteen re-used pieces of Dundry stone, several highly decorated, most likely derived from the Franciscan friary. The wall was of early post-Dissolution date.
Finds included medieval and post-medieval pottery, decorated medieval floor-tiles, ridge-tile and roof-slate, a medieval copper-alloy ring-brooch and a halfpenny of Elizabeth I.
During monitoring of an excavation for a lift-shaft inside the Calendar Building, a medieval pit containing roof-slate, ridge-tile and pottery was recorded.
6 St Ultans, Laytown, Drogheda, Co. Louth
