County: Kildare Site name: KILDARE: Pigeon Lane
Sites and Monuments Record No.: SMR 22:29 Licence number: 01E1192
Author: Dominic Delany
Site type: Cultivation ridges, Pit and Field boundary
Period/Dating: Post Medieval (AD 1600-AD 1750)
ITM: E 672495m, N 712492m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 53.157987, -6.916021
Test excavation was undertaken on the site of a proposed housing development at Pigeon Lane, Kildare, on 14 and 15 December 2001. The development site is located outside the area of archaeological potential in Kildare town, as defined in the Urban Archaeology Survey of County Kildare (OPW, 1995). The suggested course of the west wall of the medieval town is located c. 400m east of the development site, and the site of the medieval Carmelite priory, known as the White Abbey, is c. 100m to the north.
The proposed development site is a field measuring 65m north–south by 80m. Four 65m-long east–west-running test-trenches were excavated. The features discovered during testing comprised several plough-furrows, a pit and a possible ditch.
Traces of irregular, shallow plough-furrows were discovered across the site but most notably in the eastern part of Trench 2, where finds from the disturbed subsoil included two clay pipe stem fragments and four post-medieval potsherds. A kidney-shaped pit was discovered in the western part of Trench 2. It had a maximum width of 0.95m and was 0.55m deep. The cut for the pit was U-shaped, and the fill was grey/brown clayey silt with a concentration of medium-sized stones at the base of the pit. Finds from the pit fill comprised frequent animal bone fragments (mixed cattle, horse and sheep/goat) and a large lump of iron slag.
A possible ditch was discovered in the western part of Trench 4. It was 2.2m wide, 1.5m deep, and the fill was mixed light grey and brown silty sand. The fill was sterile apart from occasional small fragments of animal bone in the upper part. This feature was not encountered in the other trenches and there was nothing to indicate its origin.
The pit and the possible ditch will not be affected by the proposed development. The discovery of plough-furrows and post-medieval potsherds suggests agricultural activity in this area in the 17th/18th century. The pit and possible ditch may be contemporary with the agricultural activity but this could not be confirmed, as there were no finds to date these features. Dúchas recommended archaeological monitoring at the construction phase of the development.
31 Ashbrook, Oranmore, Co. Galway
