County: Louth Site name: PRIORY OF ST. LEONARD, Seatown, Dundalk
Sites and Monuments Record No.: SMR 7:53B Licence number: —
Author: Kieran Campbell,
Site type: Burial ground
Period/Dating: Late Medieval (AD 1100-AD 1599)
ITM: E 704928m, N 807410m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 54.005252, -6.399333
Human remains were discovered by a Telecom Éireann crew when digging a trench for the laying of cables at the corner of Seatown and Chapel St., Dundalk. A salvage excavation was undertaken on behalf of the County Museum.
The cable trench, 7m long and 0.8–1m wide, was located on the footpath 10.7m to the east of St Leonard's Garden on the site of the medieval Priory and Hospital of St Leonard. Parts of four in situ inhumations were excavated at the east end of the trench. The graves had been dug into natural gravel to a maximum depth of 0.8m. A charnel pit of disarticulated bone was exposed at the west end where the trench was widened for the construction of a manhole. A dump of stone rubble with roof-slate and small fragments of medieval ridge- tile lay between the burials and charnel pit. Pottery sherds of 13th–14th-century date were found with one of the burials and in gravelly fill under the charnel pit. All the deposits continued north under the garden wall of the old County Library.
6 St Ultans, Laytown, Drogheda, Co. Louth
