County: Louth Site name: DROGHEDA: 41 Magdalene Street Lower
Sites and Monuments Record No.: SMR 24:41 Licence number: 99E0543
Author: Malachy Conway, Archaeological Consultancy Services Ltd.
Site type: Excavation - miscellaneous
Period/Dating: Modern (AD 1750-AD 2000)
ITM: E 708845m, N 775520m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 53.717996, -6.350909
An assessment of a proposed residential development at 41 Magdalene Street, Drogheda, Co. Louth, was undertaken on 27 October 1999. The site is on the east side of Magdalene Street, which dates from around 1250, was the main road to the North Gate and features on most of the early maps of the town. The site, which formerly contained garages and part of a dwelling that were demolished before the assessment, is within the line of the town walls of Drogheda, within the zone of archaeological potential. It lies c. 40m west of St Peter's Church of Ireland church, which dates from 1748, and is on the site of St Peter's Collegiate Church (SMR 24:16), originally founded before 1186.
The three west-east-orientated test-trenches were excavated across the areas of proposed dwelling construction using a mini-digger.
Trench 1 was at the northern end of the site, measuring 4m by 0.8m and excavated to a maximum depth of 0.9m. Rubble overburden mixed with brown soil was found to an average depth of 0.4m over a mixed deposit comprising patches of orange clay, black humic soil (containing fragments of shell), broken stone and red brick between 0.4 and 0.5m deep. Orange clay subsoil containing numerous angular and rounded stones lay 0.8m below present ground level. The remains of a low, north-south-aligned rubble foundation wall containing red brick fragments were revealed lying above the clay subsoil 2.2m from the eastern perimeter wall. The wall, 0.8m wide and no more than 0.35m high, lay 4m below ground level and would appear to represent the remains of a partition wall associated with the previous property on the site. A further stretch of this rubble wall was also found in Trench 2.
Trench 2, measuring 4m by 0.8m, was c. 5m south of Trench 1, towards the northern end of the site, and was excavated to a maximum depth of 0.8m. Rubble overburden mixed with brown soil on average 0.55m deep overlay a fairly mixed deposit of redeposited orange subsoil, black humic soil (containing shell fragments), broken stone and brick at most 0.3 deep. Orange clay subsoil containing numerous angular and rounded stones lay at a depth of 0.7-0.8m below present ground level. Remains of a low, north-south-aligned deposit of stone rubble, mainly comprising large, rounded limestone boulders, were revealed lying above the clay subsoil 2.5m into the site from the eastern perimeter wall. This comprised a rough structure, 1m wide and up to 0.4m high, which lay 0.17m below present ground level and is a continuation of the partition wall foundation uncovered in Trench 1.
Trench 3, measuring 3.5m by 0.8m, was close to the southern end of the site and was excavated to a maximum depth of 0.9m. Rubble overburden mixed with brown soil on average 0.25m deep overlay a fairly homogeneous deposit of light brown clay loam containing occasional fragments of red brick and broken stone up to 0.6m deep. Orange clay subsoil containing numerous angular and rounded stones lay at the base of the trench, 0.85m below present ground level.
In summary, no archaeological features or deposits were revealed in any of the trenches, and no finds were recovered.
15 Trinity Street, Drogheda, Co. Louth
