County: Down Site name: Sugar House Quay, Islandbank, Lisdrumgullion
Sites and Monuments Record No.: DOW046–500 Licence number: AE/06/237
Author: David Kilner, Archaeological Development Services Ltd, Unit 48, Westlink Enterprise Centre, 30–50 Distillery Street, Belfast, BT12 5BJ.
Site type: Small-scale intertidal/urban, over former Newry Canal
Period/Dating: —
ITM: E 708578m, N 826956m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 54.180058, -6.336679
Archaeological investigations were carried out at Islandbank, adjacent to the former Newry Canal Basin Quay (Industrial Heritage Record 172:45) in September 2006. This investigation was in advance of the construction of a new generator building and Northern Ireland Electricity substation, which were to be sited upon the former north-eastern line of the canal basin entrance.
The Newry Canal has been awarded scheduled protected status by EHS: Built Heritage and this protected area includes the former basin and entrance, which had been filled in, with the basin now used as a carpark. Previous archaeological investigations have found that quay walls and berthing structures have often been buried virtually intact within fill material. It was thought that the canal entrance could also be buried within the fill and so investigations took place to see whether any of the scheduled protected structure remained extant.
The investigations within the footprints of the proposed structures found that almost the entirety of the basin entrance had been removed, with the ground made up with fill. The entrance to the canal had been embanked with a very large associated concrete ground beam running south-west to north-east across the site. An undressed stone was the only part of the basin entrance uncovered. This was located within the north-western corner of the site, within the north-western corner of the proposed generator building footprint. The stone lay 1.08m beneath the current ground surface and was set on natural bedrock, suggesting it was part of the basal course. It was approximately ‘club’-shaped, measuring 1.3m along its longest edge (north-west/south-east) by 1.52m. The cuts for the embankment and the concrete ground beam were located to the immediate north-west and south-east of the stone. These cuts have removed any other remnants of the basal course, and fill above the stone consisted of gravel consistent with the material used to infill the embankment.
