1996:287 - DUNDALK: Park Street, Louth

An archaeological assessment of a proposed development site at Park Street, Dundalk, was carried out in August 1996. The site lies within the medieval suburb of ‘Upper Quarter’ or ‘Upper End’, located at the south end of the walled medieval town. Five test-trenches were excavated to the surface of natural clay. The stratigraphy recorded in each of the test-trenches was very similar. Old concrete floors and fills of relatively modern date were present to a maximum depth of 0.54m below present ground surface. Below this, to a depth of 0.9m, deposits in several trenches were identified as old garden soils, datable to the eighteenth/nineteenth centuries. Pig bones recovered from one of the trenches appear to represent a single animal.

A brown peaty clay present at a similar depth in all of the trenches indicates that marsh or bog formally existed in this low-lying area. The peaty clay was found generally to overlie natural green to grey clay, except in one trench where a thin organic deposit was sandwiched between the peat and the natural clay. One bone fragment was observed in this layer but no evidence of a date was recovered.