County: Westmeath Site name: ATHLONE: Irishtown Upper
Sites and Monuments Record No.: N/A Licence number: 97E0313
Author: Edmond O’Donovan, Margaret Gowen & Co. Ltd.
Site type: Excavation - miscellaneous
Period/Dating: Post Medieval (AD 1600-AD 1750)
ITM: E 604449m, N 741325m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 53.422024, -7.933051
Archaeological test excavation was carried out on a site at Irishtown Upper, Athlone, Co. Westmeath. The site was located on the southern side of a natural gravel ridge, where the ground falls from north to south down to the flood-plain of the River Shannon.
Irishtown Upper was a post-medieval suburb. Extramural property plots and houses are evident on two late 17th-century maps of Athlone, extending as a linear suburb along the Dublin road through Irishtown (Philips’s map of Athlone, 1685, and Goubet’s map of Athlone, 1691). The medieval town, located 200m to the west of the development site, was bounded by the town wall.
The archaeological assessment involved the excavation of seven test-trenches throughout the site. Trenches 1 and 2 revealed fen peat at the southern end of the site. This material was derived from natural processes, i.e. the natural reed-beds occurring along the Shannon Callows. Trenches 3 and 4 located a thin deposit of ‘garden soil’ overlying the natural sand/gravel. The depth of the brown topsoil increased to up to 0.8m at the southern end of the site. The demolition rubble and semi-basement recorded in Trench 5 were modern. Trenches A and B revealed that no trace of any archaeological features survived along the Irishtown Upper street front.
The early cartographic sources indicate the presence of property boundaries perpendicular to the street on the southern side of Irishtown Upper in the late 17th century. If any buildings existed in the late 17th century, along the street front, no traces of them survive today.
Rath House, Ferndale Road, Rathmichael, Co. Dublin
