2004:0812 - CELBRIDGE: Maynooth Road, Kildare

Test excavations were conducted at a site near the remains of Celbridge workhouse (in the south) and the boundary wall of Castletown Demesne (to the east), both of which are protected structures listed in the Kildare County Development Plan of 1999. The wall of Castletown Demesne also forms the townland boundary. The workhouse graveyard defines the western limits of the site. Cartographic analysis indicates that a quarry and pond were situated in the south-west and north-west corners of the site respectively.

Nine trenches excavated across the site ranged from 12m to 90m in length. They were excavated to an average depth of 0.2m, exposing the underlying orange/brown clay subsoil with protruding bands of slate bedrock.

Trench 6 was excavated to investigate the nature of a curvilinear field boundary in the north-west corner of the site, which is denoted as the area of two ponds on the second-edition OS map. It was excavated to a maximum depth of 0.8m and four stratigraphic layers were identified, comprising topsoil, redeposited subsoil, a grey dump layer containing 19th- and 20th-century pottery, glass, brick and animal bone. This layer was used to fill in the ponds and overlay the subsoil, which was an orange/brown clay with shattered/weathered bedrock exposed.

Trench 8 was excavated in the vicinity of the quarry site to a maximum attainable depth of 1.86m, after which point the trench became unstable and collapsed. A 0.1m deposit of topsoil was removed, after which 1.76m of an organic dark-brown soil was removed. This deposit was used to fill in the quarry and contained 50% inclusions of animal bone, modern crockery and red brick.

No artefacts or stratigraphy of an archaeological nature were identified during the course of the testing programme.

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