2005:1050 - BRIDGE OF PEACE CARPARK, DROGHEDA, Louth

An assessment was carried out at a local authority carpark between Narrow West Street and the River Boyne, Drogheda, Co. Louth. The site is immediately east of the Bridge of Peace and west of the garda station. As the excavation was beside the medieval town wall (SMR 24:41), a National Monument, consent was sought from the Minister of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government.
Medieval cartographic and documentary evidence suggest that the site belonged to the Hospital and Priory of St Mary d’Urso and was apparently open ground, perhaps used for agriculture or as a garden. The archaeological evidence suggests that the land, while within the town defences, was not settled but was reclaimed on an ongoing basis from at least the 13th century and possibly earlier. This reclamation process might have taken as much as two hundred years. Certainly, the internal ground level had been raised sufficiently by the 14th century to necessitate the heightening of the town wall in this period. Ravell’s map (1749) labelled this area ‘Alderman Barlow’s Garden’. James Barlow was sworn a free merchant of the Corporation in 1733, elected to the office sheriff in 1735 and mayor in 1738. In 1734, he constructed a five-bay, three floors over basement Georgian residence on West Street. The house remains today as the Drogheda Arts Centre. The gardens were presumably laid out when the house was built. The north-west waterfront seems to have taken on an industrial aspect from the mid-18th century as the Linen Hall and later a salt works and timber yard were constructed. Only in 2001 was the access road along the eastern side of the site constructed, linking Wellington Quay with Narrow West Street.
The method of reclamation differed from elsewhere within the town. At Dyer Street, a c. 1.5m-thick reclamation deposit containing pottery, floor and roof tiles, bone, metal and wood objects, leather, rope and textile of medieval date suggested that reclamation was primarily through the dumping of domestic and industrial waste. The reclamation deposits within the Bridge of Peace site did not contain the same number or range of artefacts, with only a small number of pottery sherds identified within each of the trenches. It is likely, given the high clay and stone content of the medieval deposits, that material excavated during the expansion years of the 13th and 14th centuries was intentionally dumped at certain locations, such as the Bridge of Peace site, the small amounts of domestic waste noted presumably coming from the properties fronting onto Narrow West Street or from St Mary’s.
Five test-trenches were excavated through the site. The trench layout was altered slightly during excavation to avoid underground services and a bottle bank facility. These trenches contained broadly identical stratigraphy of modern, post-medieval and medieval reclamation deposits covering natural estuarine silts. While no archaeological structures were noted in the excavated trenches, a rock-cut trench in which was found a sherd of medieval pottery and large lumps of mortar was noted. This may represent a small quarry of a local limestone source and may therefore be connected to the construction of either the town defences or the precinct of St Mary d’Urso’s. This could not be fully investigated, due to buried service pipes within the carpark (further investigation was carried out by Ian Russell in 2005/6). There was no evidence for medieval structures, revetments, burgage plots or domestic or industrial occupation features. It is unlikely that development at this location will impact on medieval subsurface remains. The south-west corner of the site is noted as the possible location of a mural tower. It could not be investigated due to the proximity of subsurface gas and sewerage pipes.