County: Antrim Site name: BELFAST: Gordon Street
Sites and Monuments Record No.: SMR 61:19 Licence number: —
Author: Ruairí Ó Baoill, Archaeological Excavation Unit, EHS
Site type: House - 17th/18th century
Period/Dating: Post Medieval (AD 1600-AD 1750)
ITM: E 734022m, N 874605m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 54.601918, -5.925661
A rescue excavation was undertaken at a site on Gordon Street, Belfast, before the internal redevelopment of a mid-19th-century listed building. The site lies within the 17th-century core of Belfast.
Gordon Street was originally known as Buller's Row and is shown partially developed on Phillips's 1685 map of Belfast. The defended gate into Belfast, known as the Strand Gate, is thought to have occupied this location. Tanneries were common in the surrounding streets. The area was redeveloped by the fifth earl of Donegall in the years after 1757, following his accession.
The building within which the excavation took place occupies the corner of Gordon Street and Victoria Street. In earlier times it had been the Corn Exchange, constructed in 1851 by Thomas Jackson after the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846. The building facade is listed.
Two trenches were opened at opposite sides of the development. The first uncovered 18th-century building foundations, founded in lough deposits, which had been both infilled and damaged as a result of modern building activity. Building remains included wall footings and plinths, mortared stone infilling away from the walls, wooden post-piles and a drain. The walls constituted part of the western and southern extent of a structure.
There was a maximum of 1.1m of stratigraphy encountered above the naturally occurring lough deposits. The lough deposits took the form of grey, silty sand, which occurred across the whole of the development site. It appears that the site lay within the Belfast Lough intertidal zone before land reclamation in this part of the town. Eighteenth-century artefacts were recovered from the foundation levels of the structure.
Excavation in Trench 2 produced no structural remains, with the stratigraphy consisting of a series of organic clay and silt dump deposits, sitting directly on top of the lough silts. The dump deposits contained artefacts dating to the 17th and 18th centuries, including fragments of pottery and clay pipes, and most likely represent both domestic and industrial rubbish.
5–33 Hill Street, Belfast BT1 2LA
