2005:447 - 24A AND 25 HILL STREET, DUBLIN, Dublin

Testing was undertaken at a proposed development at Nos 24A and 25 Hill Street, Dublin 1, in April 2005. The earliest phase of activity found dated to the earlier two-thirds of the 18th century and was represented by an organic layer of garden or cultivation soil and a number of ditches relating to cultivation. The organic layer had large amounts of animal bone and oyster shell that represented discarded domestic food waste. The cultivation and dumping of waste took place to the rear of a group of buildings on North Great George’s Street belonging to Nicholas Archdales Esquire, which are marked on Roque’s 1756 map of Dublin.
The testing also revealed the foundations of late 18th- and early 19th-century building foundations and plot boundaries. Behind the buildings were a cobbled back yard and a number of brick-and-stone-lined drains that would have serviced the structures. A stone-lined outhouse or waste pit was also found behind the structure at No. 24A, in which was a large number of smashed plates of the period. These remains were considered to be of archaeological value, as they were within the curtilage of the protected structures at Nos 47 and 48 North Great George’s Street.