County: Louth Site name: DUNDALK: Bridge Street
Sites and Monuments Record No.: SMR 7:119 Licence number: 00E0021
Author: Finola O’Carroll, Cultural Resource Development Services Ltd.
Site type: Historic town
Period/Dating: Multi-period
ITM: E 704668m, N 807983m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 54.010448, -6.403108
Test-trenching took place as a condition of planning permission. The site is located at the north end of Bridge Street, which lay within the medieval town of Dundalk. It consists of plot that measured 50m north–south by 56m. Four test-trenches (measuring c. 1m x 7m) were excavated in the northern half of the site. They were excavated within and outside of the building imprint, so as not to disturb the location of the proposed foundation trenches. The rest of the site was occupied by a gasometer, which was shown, on removal, to cut into subsoil.
Trenching revealed that subsoil was reached at a depth of between 0.15m and 1.64m. General stratigraphy consisted of builder’s rubble in places and modern garden soils, which overlay grey-brown, silty clays. Trench 1 revealed a greater depth of material, which sloped away to the west and north-west. The slope may be related to the presence of a former laneway, as shown on Richardson’s map of 1680. This trench contained some material of possible archaeological provenance below the grey-brown, silty clays. A 0.3m-thick mottled deposit of grey-brown, silty clay and yellow redeposited subsoil, containing a single sherd of 13th–14th-century local ware, was located at a depth of 1.34m and ran for 2.5m at the north end the trench.
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