County: Antrim Site name: BELFAST: 23 Donegall Street
Sites and Monuments Record No.: SMR 61:17 Licence number: AE/01/11
Author: Ciara McManus, ADS
Site type: Building
Period/Dating: Modern (AD 1750-AD 2000)
ITM: E 733922m, N 874495m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 54.600957, -5.927258
Excavations within the Shah Din building, 23 Donegall Street, commenced on 16 March 2001 and continued over the following week. The excavation was carried out within the footprint of an elevator shaft that was to be placed within the existing building as part of ongoing refurbishments. The building is in an archaeologically sensitive part of Belfast, within the line of the 17th-century ramparts and in the vicinity of the late 17th/early 18th-century Belfast potteries. The excavation revealed the remains of two post-medieval red brick walls forming a T-junction within the area of the elevator shaft.
A trench, 2m by 2m, was opened up to encompass the full extent of the proposed elevator shaft, and the modern hard-core rubble was removed with the aid of a small mechanical digger. Removal of this overburden revealed two phases of building within this small area. Two possibly contemporary walls, one abutting the other at right angles, and a third later wall were uncovered, the latter having been added in to the internal corner of the two abutting earlier walls.
Unit 48, Westlink Enterprise Centre, 30–50 Distillery Street, Belfast BT12 5BJ
