County: Kildare Site name: KILDARE: Claregate Street
Sites and Monuments Record No.: N/A Licence number: 00E0121
Author: Niall Gregory
Site type: Historic town
Period/Dating: Multi-period
ITM: E 672727m, N 712419m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 53.157299, -6.912570
A test excavation was conducted in Kildare town, on a site adjacent to Claregate Street and Bangup Lane, between 26 and 29 June 2000. It took place in advance of a commercial supermarket development and prior to instigation of a planning application. The site is within an archaeologically sensitive area of the medieval town.
Three of the proposed test-trenches were excavated, and another was started but abandoned because of the presence of an active utility line. Trench 1 was situated in the north-eastern part of the site. It was 10m long and oriented east–west. Beneath the sod layer and underlying topsoil, there was layer of rubble debris and painted wood. Beneath this was a dark grey/brown, silty soil. The silty material constituted the fill of a double-ditch arrangement that was dug into the natural subsoil of yellow/grey, friable, sandy soil.
A double-ditch arrangement was revealed running perpendicular to the test-trench, in a north–south direction. The overall width of the structure was c. 5m. The eastern ditch was 1.5m wide; the western ditch was 1.7m wide. Both ditches had a U-shaped profile and were separated by a 1.8m-long plateau of natural subsoil, 0.6m high. Inaccessibility to the trench prevented a closer examination of the ditches and their fill. While quantities of animal bone were retrieved, nothing of an artefactual nature was found.
Trenches 2 and 3 were situated in the north-central and central areas of the site respectively. These trenches contained a mixture of garden soil and rubble. Nothing of an archaeological nature was found in either.
Work on Trench 4 was postponed shortly after it was started because a utility cable was found to run along its length. Similarly, Trenches 5 and 6 were postponed until such time as the extant modern structures on the site are removed and their utility lines are no longer in service.
The test-trenches indicate that the proposed development would impinge on the revealed archaeology. It would therefore be necessary to conduct an archaeological excavation on the site. In the absence of results from a complete test excavation, it is difficult to determine the full extent of the archaeology.
Flat 1, Main Street, Blessington, Co. Wicklow
