2004:1078 - DARVER, Louth

Pre-development testing took place for an extension to a function room that was originally part of the range of early 19th-century farm buildings attached to Darver Castle, a four-storey tower-house which has been continuously inhabited since its construction. The castle now specialises in wedding receptions with guest accommodation. The development was situated in an open yard attached to the east side of the castle and Regency period addition. At its closest point, the yard is 12m from the east wall of the medieval tower-house.

In 1999 the farm building in the yard had been remodelled as a large function room and kitchens. At that time, unlicensed monitoring of foundation trenches for a large extension on the north side of the farm building recorded deposits of 19th-century date or later, and no medieval fabric was noted in the farm building itself. The new extension was to the south side and consisted of a 19m (east-west) by 5.5m 'lean-to' structure that necessitated the construction of only one new wall, 17.5m long, to support the south side of the new building.

Three 1.8m by 0.8m test-pits excavated by mini-digger revealed a uniform stratigraphy across the yard. A surface layer of gravel and hardcore, 0.3m thick, covered loose stone rubble extending to a depth of 0.7m. Occasional fragments of brick occurred in the rubble, but no mortar. A plain white-glazed earthenware lid from the rubble should date to the 19th or early 20th century. Below the stone rubble, a deposit of stony grey silty clay, 0.2m thick, overlay the light-brown clay subsoil at a depth of 0.9m below present ground level. The boundary between the stone rubble and the underlying stony clay was not clear and both may constitute a single deposit. The stone rubble was of the same local shale as used in the extensive farmyard buildings and may be material left over from building work in the 19th century that was levelled out to create the yard between the farm range and the castle.

6 St Ultan's, Laytown, Drogheda