2000:0227 - CLONDALKIN: Orchard Lane/Tower Road, Dublin

Test excavation was carried out in response to a recommendation by Dúchas The Heritage Service at the site of a proposed new Garda station in Clondalkin, Dublin 22. The new station is to be built on the site of the existing station that lies at the junction of Orchard Lane and Tower Road. The site lies within an area of archaeological potential as identified in the Urban Archaeological Survey for County Dublin, within the northern end of the early monastic enclosure of Clondalkin.

Clondalkin owes its origins to the 7th-century foundation of a monastery dedicated to St Mochua. The monastery developed within an enclosure at the centre of which was a round tower (SMR 41:1) and church (SMR 41:2) and the line of which is retained in the shape of Orchard Lane and Main Street.

The development site covers an area approximately 70m east–west by 50m. At the time of excavation the north-western corner of the development area functioned as a public footpath and was not subject to archaeological test excavation. Within the remainder of the site, three trenches were opened using a mechanical excavator fitted with a toothless bucket working in level spits of c. 0.2m. They were 1.2m wide and 8.4–10.5m long. The trenches were placed where the impact of the proposed development appeared to be the greatest. Two trenches were located along the line of the footprint of the proposed station, while the third was placed along the line of two new service manholes. Each was excavated to natural. In all cases natural was found to be very compact, yellow/ brown, silty clay with occasional small limestone boulders.

In Trench 1 part of a limestone floor and wall of a 19th-century building that had stood on the site prior to the construction of a Garrick Lodge was revealed. OS maps indicate that this building was one of a series of buildings fronting onto Orchard Lane, which by 1908 had been demolished and replaced. The demolition rubble of red brick and mortar was used to raise the ground surface in advance of construction of the Garrick Lodge.

The uppermost fill of Trench 2 consisted of a 0.25m-deep horizon of tarmac underlain by hardcore. This lay directly over natural for most of the trench’s length. All topsoil had clearly been removed before the laying of the tarmac surface. This area had formerly been the front garden of the present Garda station. At the west-north-west end of the trench a ditch was uncovered (OD 100.173m) that was U-shaped in profile, 1.25m wide and 0.7m deep. The ditch was an early 19th-century field boundary or represented use of the site in the 19th century prior to the construction of the existing buildings now serving as a Garda station.

The stratigraphy in Trench 3 consisted of 0.6m of topsoil and fill directly overlying natural. In one part of the trench part of a redbrick and concrete footpath was uncovered.

The test excavations showed there to have been intense 19th-century activity on the site involving building construction, demolition, infill and topsoil-stripping. As a result the level of relatively recent activity on this site had more than likely destroyed any evidence for earlier occupation of the site. It was recommended that development be allowed to proceed without any additional archaeological requirements.

Windsor House, 11 Fairview Strand, Fairview, Dublin 3