2003:1876 - DUNGARVAN: Shandon Road/O'Connell Street, Waterford

NMI Burial Excavation Records

County: Waterford Site name: DUNGARVAN: Shandon Road/O'Connell Street

Sites and Monuments Record No.: WA031-040---- Licence number: 03E1126

Author: Maurice F. Hurley

Site type: No archaeology found

Period/Dating: N/A

ITM: E 625384m, N 594069m

Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 52.097956, -7.629505

The site is situated on the north-western side of the present town centre of Dungarvan and consists of c. 22 acres, which comprise a disused dairy processing plant and ancillary yards, access roads and buildings. The site is bounded on the north by the ring road (N25) and on the east by Shandon Road. The southern boundary is irregular, lying to the north of properties fronting O'Connell Street.

More than two-thirds of the site is within the zone of archaeological potential, with one-tenth within the Recorded Monument of Dungarvan Historic Urban Area. The site is outside the known area of the medieval town.

The area was extensively covered by the buildings of the former dairy food processing plant. The 19th-century creamery formed the nucleus of the 20th-century expansion of Waterford Co-op creameries and the site was subsequently the property of Avonmore Group Plc, and later Glanbia Plc. Most of the buildings date from the 1960s to 1990s.

Fifteen test-trenches were excavated. There was no identifiable archaeological material within the area excavated. The general make-up of the ground was similar over most of the site: a modern concrete surface, and grey sandy silt over yellow clay. There were no features or artefacts found in the silt layer and the yellow clay was undisturbed boulder clay. In some trenches, the ground was extensively disturbed to a depth of c. 3m below the modern surface. On the southern part of the site, the upper levels were composed of introduced layers of gravel and fill. A layer of buried soil recorded in one trench contained three sherds of late 19th/20th-century pottery. Beneath this buried soil, the subsoil was gravel.

312 Bruach na Laoi, Union Quay, Cork