County: Westmeath Site name: MULLINGAR: Grove Street, Mullingar
Sites and Monuments Record No.: N/A Licence number: 02E1255 ext.
Author: Finn Delaney, Dominic Delany & Associates
Site type: No archaeology found
Period/Dating: N/A
ITM: E 643397m, N 752875m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 53.524050, -7.345531
Testing at a site in Grove Street, Mullingar, Co. Westmeath, took place on 17 October 2003. Two previous phases of testing were carried out at the site by Dominic Delany in August 2002 and January 2003. Four trenches were excavated across the footprint of the proposed apartment block, which fronts onto Grove Street, using a large tracking machine fitted with a 1.5m-wide toothless bucket.
The stratigraphy across the site was relatively uniform. A modern mixed layer of building rubbish covered the tested area to a depth of 0.3m. This was underlain by dark-brown to grey silty clay which can be interpreted as a garden soil and is consistent with local assertions that the site was used as an orchard/vegetable garden until c. 1950, when it was developed as a sawmill. A number of small ditches ran across the trenches and were cut into the underlying natural. These have been interpreted as small drainage ditches and would again be consistent with the use of the area as a vegetable garden. Two larger ditches noted in Trench 1 were also interpreted as drainage ditches and were located in an area where waterlogging occurred within the trench. The concrete foundations of the recently demolished buildings caused some disturbance to the stratigraphy in all of the trenches.
No archaeological features or finds were noted within any of the four trenches. The previous two phases of testing similarly produced no evidence of any archaeological activity within the site boundaries.
Unit 3, Howley Court, Oranmore, Co. Galway
