2005:1040 - CARLINGFORD: Back Lane, Louth

An assessment, involving testing, was a requirement of planning permission on the site of a housing development at Back Lane, Carlingford. A survey of a late medieval house that adjoins the site to the north was carried out by John Stirland on 22 April 2005. The house was at least two storeys high and lay within its own burgage plot. It may represent one of seven ‘castles’ listed in the town by Viscount Dungannon in 1667 (Gosling 1992). A high pitched south gable wall survives, together with a carved human head in late medieval style. The carving is believed to have come from the Dominican friary and would have been incorporated into the stonework of the house to ward away evil. The proposed development will have limited visual and no physical impact on the gable of the late medieval house.

Testing was carried out on 23 May. The narrow back garden site was located on a steep slope and two parallel trenches were excavated downslope across the area. The stratigraphy was comprised of three layers above natural subsoil: a very modern garden soil overlying an earlier garden soil and in turn overlying the former plough-zone soil. A large modern rubbish pit was uncovered along the southern side of the site. This was at least 7m long and of unknown depth. It truncated the eastern edge of another modern cut, which appeared to be related to the construction of the adjacent property. No archaeological finds or features were uncovered during testing.

Reference
Gosling, P. 1992 Carlingford Town: An Antiquarian’s Guide. Carlingford.

Unit 21, Boyne Business Park, Greenhills, Drogheda, Co. Louth