2000:0907 - METHODIST CHURCH HALL, Wine Street, Sligo, Sligo

Site testing took place in October and November 1999 at the rear and east side of the Methodist Church Hall, Wine Street, Sligo (Excavations 1999, 282). Because of engineering site constraints at that time, a wall, Wall W, found during the excavation, could not be followed westwards until the structure of the new building was in place. Thus testing along the front (i.e. inside of the footpath) was deferred until June 2000.

In the current programme, Wall W was shown to continue for a length of 7m from the east boundary of the site and proved to be at least 0.72m thick; the concrete footpath prevented further examination at this stage. There was a 3m-wide break before the pillar to the north-east of the church. The eastern 1m of this break was well built with lesser-quality stones than in Wall W to the east; the rest was just a dump of stones. A few limestone stones with a sandstone ending in this gap may have been part of a cobbled pavement. This looked like a crudely filled gap that may be contemporaneous with the building of the church hall. At 3m wide, it could have been to facilitate that construction work.

While Wall W had a good south face, its thickness and function were masked by the footpath. When the path was lifted in January 2001, the ground under it was similar to that behind the stone wall. The cutting of the trench for the ESB line was also observed. The ground under the street had been severely disturbed by the insertion of several pipelines, so the trench could not be cut more than 0.3–0.45m in depth. The material was mainly gravelly road material; one piece of oyster shell, a common occurrence in Sligo town, was noted in it.

It is still not known if Wall W was a boundary wall or part of a building, the rest of which underlies Wine Street; otherwise, all features exposed post-date the Methodist church.

Bóthar An Corran, Keash, Co. Sligo