2006:1357 - DUNDALK: CBS School, Chapel Street, Louth

Test-trenches were excavated in August 2006 on a site for an 11m by 5m extension to the CBS school. The development site lies immediately outside the area of the medieval town in the angle between the walled town, aligned north–south, and the medieval suburb of Seatown. The site of the school is shown as open space on maps of Dundalk of 1680 and 1785, and on the 1836 6-inch OS map. In the 1860s, this open space was laid out in streets of terraced houses, named James’s Street, William Street and Union Street, and 95 houses occupied what is now a schoolyard. These streets survived until the building of the school c. 1950.

All the foundation trenches necessary for the development were excavated as part of the testing. Under the schoolyard surface a brick floor was found at a depth of 0.3m in all the trenches. Under the brick floors, cobbled stone surfaces were found 0.35–0.5m below the present yard surface. The cobbles were associated with a 0.1m-thick deposit of chocolate-brown soil containing sherds of late 19th/early 20th-century glazed white earthenware and china. The brick and cobbled floors relate to the terraced houses that stood here from the 1860s to c. 1950.

The cobbles overlay deposits of greyish-white and brown clays that extended below the limit of excavation at 1m depth. The clays contained occasional fragments of brick and are therefore redeposited materials, probably the result of groundworks in advance of the development of the site for housing in the 1860s. Natural subsoil was not encountered in any of the trenches.

6 St Ultan’s, Laytown, Co. Meath