2001:1182 - SLIGO: 61–62 John Street, Sligo

The site is to the south-west of Sligo town centre, and is situated immediately to the north-east of St John’s Church, highlighted in the Medieval Urban Survey (unpublished, OPW) as the possible site of a 13th-century hospital. The site is currently occupied by a two-storey terraced house, with single-storey outbuildings and lean-to sheds to the rear. Because the site is within the limits of the zone of archaeological potential of Sligo town, a pre-development impact assessment was requested as part of the planning approval for the proposal.

The results from the testing of the northern portion of the proposed development area indicate that the underlying ground slopes quite steeply from south to north. This is not surprising as the site of St John’s Church, immediately to the south of the development, is on a knoll of local high ground. The increasing quantities of the dark grey clay loam noted in the test-trenches can therefore be seen as material imported onto the site to make up the ground to the rear of the buildings on John Street. In addition, this ground was probably always used as garden plots and this would have added to the depth of these soils. The recovery of red brick and roof slate from the lowest levels of the sections suggests that these soils are neither very old nor archaeologically significant. Close attention was paid to the base of the trenches in order to investigate the possibility of an enclosure associated with the original foundation of St John’s as a hospital. Nothing of archaeological significance was noted cut into the subsoil.

Unit 48, Westlink Enterprise Centre, 30–50 Distillery Street, Belfast BT12 5BJ