1999:870 - MULLINGAR: Friars Mill Road, Westmeath

Testing was carried out at Friars Mill Road, Mullingar, before a proposed commercial development. Part of the site is within the medieval walls and lay on the road between Castle Street and the Dominican priory, where the mill was situated. It is east of a small Presbyterian church first opened in 1825.

Five trenches were excavated across the site. Trench 1 was 9.9m by 1.2m and ran east-west. Concrete and modern soil containing brick, plastic and pottery up to 0.8m deep overlay a light brown layer of humic soil containing red brick fragments, ash lenses and 18th-century pottery up to 0.43m deep. This overlay a layer of compact, sticky, grey marl containing frequent small stones. Below this was sterile, grey, natural gravel, which was dug to 1.5m below ground level to ensure that it was not redeposited.

Trench 2 was 20.2m south of the modern boundary wall of the cemetery and ran east-west. It contained an identical stratigraphical sequence to that in Trench 1. Trench 3 was 5m from the southern boundary wall and ran east-west. It contained an identical stratigraphical sequence to that in Trenches 1 and 2.

Trench 4 ran north-south along almost the entire length of the site. It contained concrete, dark brown, modern soil and light brown, 19th/18th-century pottery. The last deposit overlay a single extended inhumation orientated north-south in a shallow grave-cut that contained 18th- and 19th-century pottery in the fill. The skeleton was examined by Laureen Buckley and was thought to be a young adult male between 18 and 25 years of age with an estimated height of 1.79m. He appeared to have been involved in heavy manual labour from an early age. The cause of death was not detectable.

Another trench excavated to the east revealed no further burials. A comparison of the graveyard boundaries on the 1854 town plan and the modern 1:1000 map shows that the original church property incorporated this site. A parliamentary act of the early 19th century required enclosure of cemeteries, and this may have resulted in contraction of the property. Later trial excavations to the south in the grounds of the Manse house found a number of further inhumations, some of which were covered in lime. These burials appeared to have been the result of a cholera epidemic in the mid-19th century, during which the Manse house was used as a hospital (D. Murphy, pers. comm., and see No. 871, Excavations 1999). This may explain the early death of the individual uncovered to the north.

15 Trinity Street, Drogheda, Co. Louth