County: Galway Site name: GALWAY: Merchants Road/Queen Street/Market Bonham Street
Sites and Monuments Record No.: SMR 94:100 Licence number: 02E1302
Author: Elizabeth Connolly, for Archaeological Services Unit Ltd.
Site type: Excavation - miscellaneous
Period/Dating: Modern (AD 1750-AD 2000)
ITM: E 529516m, N 724990m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 53.270559, -9.056672
Test excavations were carried out in August and September 2002 on the site of a proposed development that involved the demolition of the McDonagh’s Hardware building at the corner of Market Bonham Street, as well as the warehousing to the rear, and the construction of an apartment building with basement carpark facilities behind the protected structure of McDonagh’s Hardware on Merchants Road. The protected structure will be retained for retail purposes.
Ten trial-trenches were excavated. Three were not fully excavated because of the presence of a reinforced concrete basement, the extent of which had not been fully realised. The basement appeared to have occupied a large area of the south-west of the site, close to the loading bays that fronted onto Queen Street. Any archaeological deposits that may have existed in this area would have been destroyed by this structure.
The stratigraphy throughout the remainder of the site appeared to be uniform. Beneath one or two layers of concrete were several layers of builder’s rubble mixed with clay or sand, up to 0.8m deep. In most of the site these overlay a shallow layer of broken purple slates (50mm deep) that sealed a surface composed of small, rounded sea pebbles set into a greenish mortar. Some sherds of blackware were found directly overlying this layer. To the north-east of the site an area of cobbling was revealed at the same depth as the rougher surface. It appeared to be associated with a possible drain or culvert constructed of roughly hewn limestone slabs. The area to the west-south-west of the site, close to the protected structure, was extremely disturbed by services.
Four engineering trial-pits were excavated along the southern wall of the protected structure to determine the nature of the wall footing. The stratigraphy encountered was the same as in the rest of the site.
As test excavations took place within the walls of the warehousing to the rear of the extant protected structure, it was recommended that these be demolished, the demolition of the 19th-century elements be monitored and all further ground reduction to archaeological levels throughout the site be recorded. Monitoring of the underpinning of the walls of the protected structure was carried out in December 2002. The 19th-century walls to be demolished were recorded, and their demolition was monitored. Works continued on-site into 2003.
Oranmore, Co. Galway
