County: Louth Site name: DROGHEDA: George’s Street
Sites and Monuments Record No.: SMR 24:41 Licence number: 01E0558
Author: Brian Shanahan, Cultural Resource Development Services Ltd.
Site type: Historic town
Period/Dating: Multi-period
ITM: E 708467m, N 775424m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 53.717212, -6.356678
An assessment was undertaken in advance of a proposed development at 97 George’s Street. The back garden abuts the exterior face of the town wall. The proposed extension measures a maximum of 30m by 25m and it was not proposed to excavate foundations below a depth of 1m. Three test-trenches, between 1m and 1.4m deep, were excavated within the building footprint.
A 1.8m-wide post-medieval mortared cobbled surface, set directly on subsoil, abutted the town wall. Two sherds of black ware were found in the loose mortar mix. This may have been a garden feature such as a path.
Subsoils consisting of boulder gravels sloped downwards outside the town wall from east to west, suggesting that the original ground level dropped sharply by c. 0.6m. Overlying layers of topsoil and redeposited subsoils 1–1.4m thick were the result of garden construction.
18th- to 19th-century pottery was found at the lowest levels, suggesting that the garden was substantially built up, presumably during the construction of the houses on George’s Street at some time between 1749, when Ravell’s map shows the area as undeveloped, and the 1840s, when an Ordnance Survey map of the town, which shows the street, was completed.
Two sherds of medieval pottery were found in disturbed contexts, but apart from the post-medieval cobbled surface no features of archaeological significance were encountered.
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