2006:1541 - Ashbourne Retail Park, Cookstown, Meath

Monitoring of groundworks associated with the development of Ashbourne Retail Park, in the townland of Cookstown, Co. Meath, was undertaken between 7 March and 4 May 2006. Groundworks extended over a subrectangular area with maximum dimensions of c. 300m north–south by 220m, bounded by the old N2 road to the north-east and by the Ballybin road to the south-east. The majority of the development area had been heavily disturbed prior to the current development. The eastern portion of the site has been occupied for some time by a range of modern buildings currently occupied by Merlin Car Auctions; the surface had previously been stripped to subsoil and covered with concrete, hardcore and tarmacadam. The central strip of the site had been made into a hardcore carpark approximately three years previously. The westernmost section of the site had not been stripped prior to the current development.
Works were carried out by tracked bulldozers and 21-ton tracked mechanical excavators equipped with toothed buckets. Monitoring was constrained by poor ground conditions created by the combination of periodic heavy showers of rain, the form of machine used and the volume of machine traffic across the site.
No archaeological features were identified and no finds of archaeological significance were recovered during the course of monitoring. Natural soils consisted of coarse silty clays mixed with gravel and decayed stone, a dull mottled yellow/brown in colour. The surviving topsoil layer was a maximum depth of 0.75m.