2005:478 - 38–45 TALBOT STREET AND 13–21 FOLEY STREET, DUBLIN, Dublin

Five test-trenches were mechanically excavated at a proposed development site at Talbot Street/Foley Street. These revealed that the earliest deposit surviving on site was a layer of late 18th-/early 19th-century garden soil. This was in turn sealed by rubble layers dating to the 19th century and later. No deposits of archaeological significance were identified in any of the trenches. The test-trench horizons seem to reflect the cartographic sources, which suggest that the development site was open ground until the middle of the 1820s.The paucity of structures associated with the 19th-century development of the site is probably related to the construction of large warehouses there during the mid- to late 20th century. Extensive areas of concrete floor slab and several concrete beam foundations associated with these warehouses were encountered during the testing programme.