2005:896 - MOUNTRATH: Shannon Street, Laois

Pre-development testing was carried out on the site of a proposed commercial development at Shannon Street, Mountrath, Co. Laois, on 12 September 2005. The development site is located in the southern part of the area of archaeological constraint around the historic town of Mountrath. The town developed in a bend along the east bank of the Mountrath River. It was situated on high ground overlooking the river, which protected it on the western side. To the east it was shielded by Maryborough, and boggy terrain to the south-west and north-east provided some defence in these quarters. The earliest known settlement at Mountrath dates to 1620, when the town was established by Emanuel Dowling and others mainly from Suffolk in England. In 1628 Sir Charles Coote obtained a licence for a market and before 1641 the town had a cloth and iron manufacturing industry. By 1659 it was the largest and most important settlement in the county. Several buildings are marked on the Down Survey map, and the outline of possible defences on the east side of the town are shown on a map dated 1730. The early town centred on a triangular green, but this was later widened to form the modern square. It had attained its modern form by 1730 and much of the surviving fabric of the town dates from the early 18th century. By the beginning of the 19th century Mountrath was one of the country’s major industrial centres.

The development site is located on the east side of Shannon Street, which lies to the south of the Market Square in the town. OS maps show the site to have been developed but all standing buildings were cleared in the 1970s. An excavator fitted with a wide grading bucket was retained to open three trenches on the footprint of the proposed new building. A thin layer of mixed rubble and hardcore directly overlay orange sand and gravel in the south-west part of the site. The only feature recorded in this area was a modern, rubble-built wall foundation. A layer of garden soil with a maximum thickness of 0.5m was recorded in the north-east part of the site. This layer sealed a subrectangular pit of post-medieval or early modern date. It extended 3m north-west/south-east and contained a single fill of grey/brown silty sand with moderate inclusions of small and medium stones, flecks of charcoal and lime, brick fragments and occasional animal bone. The fill became wet and sticky at the base of the pit, probably as a result of waterlogging. The cut for the pit was almost vertical and it had a maximum depth of 0.6m. A large red-brick fragment was recovered from the base of this feature, indicating a definite post-medieval/early modern date.

Unit 3, Howley Court, Oranmore, Co. Galway