2002:1670 - SLIGO: Laurel Hill, Sligo

Before testing of this site, an examination was made of the 1837 OS map. This shows an unbroken street frontage in the area of the Laurel Hill property, with a continuous development of terraced properties on the north side of Gore Street, later renamed The Mall. The 1855 OS map shows a break in the terrace and the emergence of the Laurel Hill property boundaries as they exist today. The footprint of a freestanding building is indicated within the curtilage of this site. This has the same proportions as the footprint of the front, single-storey part of the building that occupied the site until recently, although two small outshoots at the front and rear are no longer in evidence. Evidence from the OS maps suggests that the original building on the site dates to between 1837 and 1855.

The four trenches excavated across the site revealed that the area originally sloped quite steeply down from the north toward The Mall. Before 1837, the date of the OS first edition, the hillside was cut into, creating a relatively flat-bottomed scarp onto which a series of terraced houses was constructed. By 1855 these houses had been demolished to make way for the construction of Laurel Hill. It was at this time, no doubt, that the site of the terraced houses was backfilled and the slope was reinstated. The backfill appears to have originated partly from the demolition of the terraces and partly from the material excavated to create the platform for the Laurel Hill house. No evidence was uncovered in any of the trenches of archaeological material pre-dating the information contained on the first-edition OS map of 1837, although the plough furrows noted to the rear of the site suggest that this area of Sligo was used for agricultural purposes until relatively recently.

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