County: Antrim Site name: BELFAST: Victoria Square
Sites and Monuments Record No.: N/A Licence number: AE/04/03
Author: Giles Dawkes, Archaeological Development Services Ltd.
Site type: House - 17th/18th century
Period/Dating: Post Medieval (AD 1600-AD 1750)
ITM: E 733498m, N 873357m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 54.590844, -5.934332
An excavation was undertaken at Victoria Square in advance of a proposed major retail development. Fronting Anne Street were the stone foundations of two late 17th/early 18th-century terraced house plots with a front and back room ground plan and central chimneystack for back-to-back fireplaces. The foundations were built of splayed, well-faced stone blocks with stone rubble infill. Back plot activity was characterised by dark earth deposits, pits and a land boundary ditch accompanied on separate occasions by a hurdle fence and a planted hedgerow. Later 18th- and 19th-century house rebuilds included a rear extension of two ranges of brick buildings and the insertion of a covered alleyway. To the south was an 18th-century reclamation scheme of the River Blackstaff mudflats. This comprised a series of grid-like stone walls built to a height of 1.8m and backfilled. The external river wall was well built with a raked face and the internal walls were randomly coursed and poorly faced.
Westlink Enterprise Centre, 30-50 Distillery Street, Belfast BT12 5BJ
