County: Offaly Site name: BIRR: Main Street
Sites and Monuments Record No.: SMR 35:12 Licence number: 02E0979
Author: John Tierney, Eachtra Archaeological Projects
Site type: Excavation - miscellaneous
Period/Dating: Modern (AD 1750-AD 2000)
ITM: E 605749m, N 704733m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 53.093156, -7.914162
Some groundworks had been completed when the client contacted us. An extension to a bakery that was being converted into two apartments was built without the required monitoring. The site was located at the southern end of the main street in Birr, at the rear of properties that date to the 18th and 19th centuries.
The excavation of a 2.2m by 1.4m soak pit was monitored. It was excavated to a depth of 1m. The upper layer was a 0.4m-deep dark-greyish-brown silty clay garden soil. It had frequent red brick and 19th-century pottery fragments. Beneath this were two rubble layers with fine to coarse gravels, sandy clays and occasional red brick and grey slate fragments. Nothing of archaeological significance was found during monitoring.
Editor's note: Although this work was carried out during 2002, the report was not received in time for inclusion in the publication covering that year.
Ballycurreen Industrial Estate, Kinsale Road, Cork
