2002:0030 - ARMAGH: College Street/Lonsdale Road, Armagh

An excavation was carried out at the site of a proposed commercial redevelopment at College Street/Lonsdale Road, Armagh city. The excavation revealed a walled yard defined by a limestone masonry wall (F43) surviving to 0.8m high (six courses). The wall extended north-east/south-west across the site, perpendicular to the Lonsdale Road frontage and parallel to College Street. It formed the southern boundary of the tanning yard, against which were four rows of tightly arranged tanning boxes that extended northward from the boundary wall. The limestone wall was traced extending the length of the site and may have originally functioned as a garden plot wall, as shown on John Rocque’s map of 1760. Immediately west of the tanning boxes a series of north-west/south-east-aligned masonry walls defined the remains of a contemporaneous storeroom or works building, partitioned by a transverse wall. Two openings in the eastern side of this building gave directly onto the boxed yard. The northern limit of the tanning yard and associated structure was defined by a south-west/north-east-aligned red-brick culvert drain. Test-trenches north of this location failed to reveal any features of archaeological significance, but scrutiny of an 1839 Valuation Map, provided by Armagh County Museum, revealed that during the early 19th century a further arrangement of tanning boxes and associated structures had lain some distance to the north of the existing remains.

Surviving wooden tanning boxes in the yard comprised two parallel rows of thirteen small rectangular boxes measuring on average 1.5m (north-west/south-east) by 1.2m, surviving to at most 0.92m deep. These boxes consisted of a planked floor (south-west/north-east) onto which the side walls were constructed. At the western end of the yard, closest to the storeroom, these boxes survived to at most nine planks high, being on average 0.12m wide, with the planks secured by a series of wooden dowels or pegs, four on the long axis and three on the short. The short-axis walls were affixed to the ends of the long axis in lap joints and were further secured by iron nails driven from the sides. Where surviving, the uppermost surrounding plank was bevelled at the surface. Toward the eastern ends of both rows of smaller boxes, later disturbance had truncated the boxes, leaving at most the base and the lowermost side-wall planks in place. Fill deposits within these boxes consisted mainly of brick and stone rubble; however, the bases of most boxes contained a wet organic deposit of oak bark or orange plastic clay. Finds within the rubble fill layers consisted of shoe and rope fragments, as well as 19th-century ceramics, bottles, and iron nails and hooks.

The third row of boxes, north of boundary wall F43, consisted of six rectangular wooden boxes (F27–F32), of which five displayed internal vertical-set corner boxes. This row was aligned south-west/north-east, measuring on average 2.4m (south-west/north-east) by 1.8m and surviving to at most 1.38m deep. These boxes were constructed similarly to the shorter ones; however, boxes F27–F31 all contained suspended floors as well as internal corner boxes. In general the primary floors were well-sealed, south-west/north-east-aligned planks over which was set a series of joists, onto which two rows of spaced short planks were then laid. Boxes F27–F31 all contained a primary fill of water-saturated oak bark, invariably overlain by rubble deposits. Occasionally roundwood trimmed timber branches were found within the basal wood bark, which may have been used to partition the material contained, given their regular arrangement. One find of note from a box of this arrangement was a wooden mallet, obviously from box construction/ repair and discarded or lost in one of the final tannings undertaken at the site.

Internal vertical corner boxes were of two-piece construction, held in place simply with wooden strips attached to the side walls of the box. A wooden skirt board at the base, fitted apparently to prevent the corner box sinking below the suspended floor, accompanied some of these internal fittings. The easternmost of this arrangement of boxes, curiously, did not contain either a suspended floor or a corner box and more resembled the final, fourth row of boxes immediately to the north.

The fourth row of boxes, north of boundary wall F43, consisted of ten rectangular wooden boxes (F33–F42), of which two were badly disturbed by later activity (F41–F42). The boxes were aligned south-east/north-west, measuring on average 2.35m (south-east/north-west) by 1.7m and surviving to at most 0.9m deep. They were constructed in a similar fashion to the others but without either corner boxes or suspended floors, as seen in five of the third-row boxes adjacent. The floor planks were well sealed, consisting on average of seven planks oriented south-west/north-east onto which the side or wall planks were arranged. None of these boxes survived intact, and at most six (on average four or five) wall planks survived. The floors of boxes F38–F42 were segmented with the aid of a simple wooden slat. These boxes all contained a primary fill of water-saturated oak bark, again overlain by rubble deposits.

A significant find from the site, recovered during the initial assessment in May 2002, was a 1799 George III gold guinea found in the base of the rubble deposit over the tanning yard.

Unit 21, Boyne Business Park, Greenhills, Drogheda, Co. Louth