1997:217 - LOUGHREA: Barracks Street, Galway

The object of the monitoring was to assess the archaeological potential of part of a back garden to the rear of an 18th- or 19th-century house at Barracks Street, Loughrea, Co. Galway, in advance of the building of a doctor's surgery.

Cartographic evidence suggested that the long, narrow shape of the garden, along with a series of other long, narrow properties elsewhere in the street, might reflect the presence of medieval burgage plots, and this, together with the fact that the site was within the circuit of the medieval walls and town ditch, suggested that the area might have archaeological potential. Furthermore, the site was located in part of the grounds of the former British Army barracks. Parts of this complex are now occupied by a parish hall and the Garda station. A plaque on one of the blocks of the military barracks is dated 1810. The building is said to have been built between 1780 and 1810.

Cutting 1 was 1m wide and 12.8m long and was cut along the length of the segment of garden due for development. The finds were all modern (18th- and 19th-century in date).

Beneath a thin soil cover was a light-coloured subsoil which gave way very gradually to hard grey boulder clay. Into this two pits containing rubble had been cut. The rubble consisted of broken stone and the only finds were 18th/19th-century brown glass bottles, red brick and mortar.

Towards the south-western end of the trench a series of limestone paving slabs of 19th-century type occurred; these were between 80mm and 105mm thick. Below this was garden soil.

Towards the north-east end of the cutting remnants of the shallow concrete foundations of a modern outbuilding were uncovered. Underlying them was mixed soil with some small stones, old red brick and 19th/20th-century pottery and glass.

Cutting 2 was opened parallel to the street at the request of the National Monuments Service. The house which had occupied the site had been demolished as part of the development and the writer had suggested that it could in the main be of late 18th- or 19th-century date, though it had been altered considerably in the 1960s and 1970s.

Cartographic evidence and the form of the building—the thickness of its walls, the presence of a stone chimney and a stone string-course at eaves level—suggested a late 18th- to early 19th-century date for its construction. The building had been extended along the right-hand side of the street frontage in modern times and the walls were a lot thinner there. The extension had blocked access to a laneway which gave access to an area on the exterior of the right boundary wall of the former infantry barracks. The entire building had been demolished to just below the level of the tarmacadam some weeks before the excavation took place.

The cutting showed that the laneway which had been covered by the modern extension was approximately 2.6–3.01m wide. Modern rubble and a concrete floor were found in it. At the western end the footing of an 18th/19th-century stone gable wall, 0.65m wide, survived beneath the concrete flooring. This suggested that the building had originally been the full length of the site.

The cutting exposed most of the length of the original back wall, which was 0.75m thick. It was found at between 0.15m and 0.2m below the external tarmacadam level and survived to a height of between 0.53m and 0.75m. It had an internal plinth, 0.13–0.21m wide and 0.3–0.32m deep, which had been built on undisturbed boulder clay.

Overall the building was 4.5m in internal width and in its most complete form was 15.5m in total internal width.

The only finds from Cutting 2 were modern demolition rubble, the back wall of the building and 18th/20th-century glazed pottery, red brick, glass, slate and clay pipe stem fragments. In the western end of the house the foundations of the western (secondary) gable were visible in the face of the cutting. In the south wall a limestone threshold of two pieces, measuring a total of 1.12m in length, was found in situ. It was 0.12m thick on average.

No deposits which can definitely be dated to before the 19th century were identified and, given that demolition work had already commenced, it was suggested that the development should proceed.