County: Kerry Site name: DINGLE: Main Street
Sites and Monuments Record No.: SMR 43:224 Licence number: 98M0016
Author: Isabel Bennett
Site type: No archaeology found
Period/Dating: N/A
ITM: E 444732m, N 601320m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 52.141891, -10.268538
Planning permission was granted to demolish existing buildings and erect a new premises to the rear of that already existing at Main Street, Dingle, Co. Kerry, with a condition attached that all topsoil removal and ground disturbance aspects of the development be monitored. The site lies on the south-western side of and about halfway up the street and backs onto the line of the town wall.
Monitoring took place on 7 September 1998, and the site was also visited on 9 September, as the concrete foundations of the building that formerly stood on the site were being removed. The site is within a burgage plot, of long burgage form, typical of Anglo-Norman towns in Ireland, and there is documentary evidence that the town of Dingle was in existence certainly from the later part of the 13th century.
Foundations were dug to an average depth of 0.5m. On the uphill portion of the site (the north-west) they were dug almost immediately into undisturbed subsoil, as it became apparent that the site must have been levelled off before the erection of the earlier building. But on the downhill portion of the development up to 0.3m of rich, dark soil lay above the subsoil.
Apart from a couple of sherds of modern, glazed pottery, and some fragments of red brick, no finds were retrieved. Apart from the modern concrete foundation of the previous building on the site, no features were apparent.
Glen Fahan, Ventry, Tralee, Co. Kerry
