2005:1582 - FRIARSMILL ROAD/SPOUTWELL LANE, MULLINGAR, Westmeath

A pre-development assessment of this site was carried out to accompany a planning application to construct a commercial development. The site comprised the former ESB yard, on which two structures stood at the time of testing. One of the structures (backing on to Friarsmill Road) would appear to date to the second half of the 19th century, while the other was a modern single-storey office building. Otherwise the site was an open tarmacadamed surface. The site lies along the northern edge of the zone of archaeological potential for Mullingar. The River Brosna runs southwards, some metres east of the site. The closest recorded monument is the ‘site of friary’ (SMR 19:57), which lies c. 250m to the north-east of the development site. This was the Augustinian priory of St Mary, established c. 1227; no trace survives above the ground. The development site lies outside the area fortified by General Ginkel in 1690–1691.
Four trenches were excavated to test the site. Three of these were laid across the length of the site but in each case it was necessary to step them or to change the line of trench, in order to accommodate existing ‘live’ drainage pipes or to leave baulks of material across the trench to stop the flow of water from east to west. The fourth trench tested the foundation of the stone boundary wall.
The test-trenches revealed that the eastern end of the site had been very waterlogged, probably due to the presence of numerous springs and possibly fed by the watercourse rising at Christian’s Well to the north. A deposit of peaty material had formed here, possibly relatively recently, as flecks of mortar and sherds of 19th-century pottery were present in it. It had been covered over with a sheet of hessian, over which hardcore had been placed before the surface was tarmacadamed. It appeared that a marl layer underlay the peat deposit, but this could not be investigated due to the amount of water that flowed into the eastern ends of the trenches.
In all three trenches, moving westwards, the peat layer thinned out and disappeared, so that the natural subsoil, comprising light-grey sandy clay, was exposed 0.6–0.7m below the present ground level.
No archaeological features were observed in the west ends of Trenches 1–3, nor in Trench 4. Although it was not possible to thoroughly investigate the east ends of Trenches 1–3, the material that was removed from the trenches was examined and there was no archaeological material in it.
There was no evidence to suggest anything other than a date in the second half of the 19th century for the stone boundary wall.