County: Louth Site name: DROGHEDA: 96 West Street
Sites and Monuments Record No.: LH024-041065 Licence number: 04E1026
Author: Finola O'Carroll, CRDS Ltd.
Site type: Excavation - miscellaneous
Period/Dating: Modern (AD 1750-AD 2000)
ITM: E 708696m, N 775195m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 53.715103, -6.353287
Monitoring was undertaken of groundworks associated with the shop storeroom extension at 96 West Street, Drogheda, Co. Louth. This building is at the corner of West Street and Duke Street. A remodelling and extension of existing storage and staff facilities to the rear of the building was proposed. These spanned the width of the property to the rear of the building with an existing open courtyard area in the middle. The existing floors were removed. Some of the existing side walls were retained.
The medieval street plan of Drogheda is largely intact, with West Street and nearby Duke Street forming part of this checkerboard plan. West Street is one of four streets running parallel to the river, while Duke Street is one of a series of smaller cross streets (Bradley 1986, 75; 1997, 16). The site is in an area that was initially a suburb between the West Gate and the Hospital of St Mary d'Urso. It is situated within a property that is likely to have originated as a medieval burgage plot.
The proposed extension and refurbishment of the existing shop storerooms involved the removal of old partitions and the replacement of existing structures constructed on a concrete slab with self-supporting walls. The partitions to be removed were of relatively modern date and no structural work was to take place to the front of the building. The maximum depth required was 0.45m below the existing concrete ground level.
After the surface concrete slab was removed, a loose mid-brown sandy silt was exposed. It had a very loose compaction with modern waste material present.
Red brick, metal bottle tops, fibreglass insulating material, glass and delft were all present. The very loose material was shovel-scraped away to reveal more of the same.
Three large shaped stones (c. 0.45m2) were identified at the northern part of the yard and were aligned in a north-south orientation. However, they were not in situ, as modern debris was underneath them.
To the south of this feature at the entrance to the most northerly storeroom were two long elongated stones (c. 0.18m by 0.7m by 0.33m), which faced each other, possibly forming some sort of entrance contemporary with the standing building. A small red-brick structure (0.76 by 1.2m) was found to the east of this. It was U-shaped in plan and its open end faced west. The bricks were mortared. The central fill consisted of a mid-dark-brown sandy silt with the same degree of modern dump material as observed elsewhere in the yard. The brick showed evidence of heating and there was a concentration of charcoal at the south-east of the structure. It is likely that this structure is part of an oven, as a bakery used to be situated in this location. During the course of the lifting of the concrete floors and yard surface and the removal of the resulting rubble, nothing of archaeological interest was noted. This stage of the works reduced ground level by 0.2m behind the building and by 0.4m at the rear of the site.
References
Bradley, J. 1986 Urban archaeological survey: County Louth. O.P.W.
Bradley, J. 1997 The topography and layout of medieval Drogheda. Drogheda.
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