County: Louth Site name: DUNDALK: St Vincent's School, Seatown Place
Sites and Monuments Record No.: LH007-119 Licence number: 04E0206
Author: Kieran Campbell
Site type: Building
Period/Dating: Modern (AD 1750-AD 2000)
ITM: E 705574m, N 807442m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 54.005403, -6.389482
A mini-digger was used to excavate a 5.5m-long test-trench on the site of a boiler house at St Vincent's Secondary School, Seatown, Dundalk. The school grounds are bounded by Castle Road on the west, Mill Street on the north and Seatown Place on the south. The 7m by 3.5m site was situated 13m from Mill Street and 35m south-east of 'Seatown Castle', the tower of the medieval Franciscan friary that was in existence by 1246. On various maps of Dundalk from 1680 to 1867 the location of the site is shown as open space or garden.
The excavator encountered a brick structure at a depth of 0.3m under garden soil. There appeared to be several levels of brick flooring against a brick wall, which formed the east side of the test-trench. The bricks continued below the 1m-deep base of the trench. The location of this brick structure accords exactly with a small building, 6m east-west by 8m, shown on the OS 1:2500 town plan of 1938-9. The building does not appear on the town plan of 1867and must therefore be of late 19th-or early 20th-century date. In the northern part of the trench garden soil, with some brick fragments and ironmongery, was 1.1m deep over possible natural gravel and clay. The depth of topsoil may be explained by the site's continuous use as a garden from at least the 17th century until the present day.
6 St Ultan's, Laytown, Drogheda
