County: Meath Site name: KELLS: Maudlin Street
Sites and Monuments Record No.: N/A Licence number: 96E0068
Author: Edmond O'Donovan for Margaret Gowen and Co. Ltd.
Site type: Historic town
Period/Dating: Multi-period
ITM: E 674475m, N 775762m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 53.726197, -6.871457
An archaeological assessment was carried out on a proposed development site on the north side of the town of Kells in March 1996. The site lies just outside the medieval walled town on the north side of Carrick Street.
Seventeen trenches were opened by mechanical excavator across four fields. One possible archaeological feature was recorded during the testing. A ditch was located along the southern boundary of the site in Field 1. It was small and shallow, suggesting that it may have functioned as a field boundary at some point. A single sherd of glazed medieval pottery was taken from the ditch.
An examination of the cartographic sources and an inspection of Trenches 1 and 2 indicate that the town wall was not located along the southern boundary in Field 1. No part of the site investigated borders the town wall. The eastern corner of the development site fronts onto Maudlin Street, but no extramural medieval activity was uncovered in the trenches opened in that area. In addition, trenches excavated through a topographical prominence between Fields 3 and 4 indicated that no archaeological activity occurred on the hillock.
Access to the site can be gained through Pitcher Lane, also known as Back Lane in the eighteenth century, at which time the lane had many property plots and houses extending onto the development site which remained in existence up to the middle of the nineteenth century. The houses and their property plots are evident on the OS 6" maps of Kells town. Scant remains of the buildings and their property plots survive on the site. These buildings are described in 1817 on registers associated with Sherrard, Brassington and Green's map as being cabins and huts. This suggests an impermanent nature for the buildings and may explain why Trenches 8, 9 and 10 uncovered little trace of these structures, which may have been built of clay.
There were no archaeological implications for the Phase 1 development of the site, and subsequent construction phases should not have any further archaeological implications.
Rath House, Ferndale Rd. Rathmichael, Co. Dublin
