1999:466 - PORTLAOISE: Jessop Street/Coote Street, Laois

NMI Burial Excavation Records

County: Laois Site name: PORTLAOISE: Jessop Street/Coote Street

Sites and Monuments Record No.: SMR 13:41 Licence number: 99E0392

Author: Dominic Delany

Site type: Town

Period/Dating: Multi-period

ITM: E 646883m, N 698443m

Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 53.034601, -7.300995

Test excavation was undertaken here before planning, from 16 to 20 July 1999. The site is north-west of the remains of the 16th-century fort and church of Maryborough (now Portlaoise). Much of the site was formerly occupied by a large, early 20th-century ironworks known as 'Kelly's Foundry'. The foundry buildings were cleared in the early 1990s. The site was covered with hardcore fills, crushed rubble and concrete slabs at the time of testing.

Testing comprised the mechanical excavation of ten test-trenches. The hardcore, crushed rubble and concrete slab surfaces occasionally overlay modern deposits but more frequently overlay the light yellowish-brown, clayey sand subsoil, which was encountered at an average depth of 0.4m. The subsoil yielded occasional modern and post-medieval pottery sherds. It had an average thickness of 0.3m and overlay the orange or reddish-brown, natural, clayey sand.

Two post-medieval linear features were encountered. A linear feature at least 22.5m long, in Trench 2, probably represents a post-medieval field or property boundary, but the origin of a short (5.65m) linear feature in Trench 9 could not be established. Both features were relatively shallow and sterile and would appear to be of limited archaeological interest. A series of walls (2m high, 0.4m wide) and a stone-lined drain were encountered in Trench 6. The walls represent a subsurface structure, but their origin could not be established. They are very distinctive in that they are almost entirely faced with rounded cobblestones, an unlikely building material. However, this is not unusual for Portlaoise, as many of the surviving 19th-century sheds and outbuildings in the town are similarly constructed.

31 Ashbrook, Oranmore, Co. Galway