County: Dublin Site name: 13 Orwell Road, Rathgar
Sites and Monuments Record No.: DU022–086 Licence number: 06E1183
Author: Kevin Lohan, Margaret Gowen & Co. Ltd, 27 Merrion Square, Dublin 2.
Site type: Urban, post-medieval
Period/Dating: —
ITM: E 715027m, N 730404m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 53.311414, -6.273850
Work carried out at 13 Orwell Road consisted of an initial phase of testing followed by a small excavation and monitoring. During the testing it was discovered that the stratigraphy of the site consisted of two phases of post-medieval land reclamation followed by a large amount of modern disturbance. In its last phase of occupation the site had been a garage, with a number of sumps, tanks and pipage inserted.
The initial phase of land reclamation was 17th-century. The second phase was late 18th/early 19th-century. Apart from these layers, also uncovered in the test phase and the focus of the later work were two skeletons buried in the 17th-century land reclamation deposit. These skeletons were buried in a single grave. No evidence was found for a coffin and the bodies do not appear to have been shrouded, as the limbs were not in a formal position. No artefacts were uncovered in the fill of the grave. The leg of one of the skeletons had been disturbed and slightly truncated by the construction of a later building. Only the bottom two courses of this structure survived for the majority of its length and it appears to have been constructed after the late 18th/early 19th century, as it is cut into the second land reclamation layer.
No other archaeological material was uncovered during testing, excavation or monitoring.
