2004:1068 - IRISH STREET, ARDEE, Louth

The site for a warehouse was situated on an unnamed lane or right-of-way that runs eastwards from the north end of Irish Street, at the northern limit of the zone of archaeological potential of Ardee. The development site lies within an extramural suburb that extended from Head Gate to Irish Gate, or 'North Gate'. On Richardson's 1677 map of Ardee the site location, c. 110m from Irish Street, is shown as open space with some trees. The 1836 OS 6-inch map shows that the area was still largely open space divided into small fields. The grant of planning permission required monitoring of the demolition of the existing building and pre-development testing.

The existing building on the site was a roofless modern single-storey workshop, built mostly of concrete breezeblocks, which incorporated part of an older, though post-1836, stone building. Test-trenches on the north and west sides of the new structure uncovered the stone foundations of the earlier building and subsoil at a depth of 0.25m under demolition rubble. On the south side of the new unit, a trench uncovered a dump of cinders extending to a maximum depth of 0.45m with subsoil below. A 20mm-long stem fragment of a clay tobacco pipe was noted in the fill.