1998:540 - MONAGHAN: Ulster Bank, The Diamond, Monaghan

Testing was undertaken at the above site to determine whether there were any surviving traces of Monaghan Castle. There is a tradition recorded in the Ordnance Survey Letters ‘That the large house in the Diamond opposite Glaslough Street, is said to possess (occupy?) the site of a castle’. This suggests the possibility that the castle stood in the location of the present Ulster Bank, which is adjacent to the Church of Ireland church and has been in use as a bank for at least 100 years. The present building was built in the 1960s on the site of a previous one, which had extended the length of the entire yard.

Two trenches were positioned across the length and breadth of the site; they revealed a stratigraphy consistent with the extensive works that have taken place on the site over the past 150 years, which have effectively destroyed any archaeological evidence.