County: Galway Site name: Galway Grammar School, College Road, Galway
Sites and Monuments Record No.: N/A Licence number: 07E0819
Author: Tamás Petéváry, Dominic Delany & Associates, Unit 3, Howley Court, Oranmore, Co. Galway.
Site type: Urban, post-medieval
Period/Dating: —
ITM: E 530481m, N 725644m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 53.276562, -9.042339
Test excavations took place at the grammar school, College Road, Galway, on 11 September 2007. The Erasmus Smith Grammar School was one of five schools established by a Cromwellian adventurer in 1657 to aid in his intention that Irish children be ‘brought up in the feare of God and good literature, and to speak the English tongue’. The school was originally located in High Street inside the historic town (GA094–100). The existing site, dating from 1815, is located in Boherbeg in the east of Galway city on the eponymous College Road and is a protected structure (No. 2301). This was part of the northern suburbs of the medieval town identified in the pictorial map of 1651 as St Bridget’s Hill. The work was carried out in compliance with a condition of planning granted to a proposed extension. Previous monitoring of work associated with the restoration of the building found nothing of archaeological significance.
Three test-trenches were opened, oriented roughly north–south along the footprint of the scheme. Trenches were dug using a small excavator with a grading bucket where possible. The stratigraphy across the site consisted of between 0.3m and 0.5m of made-up ground or backfill on top of green–yellow boulder clay. There was no topsoil. Trench 1 was located in the west of the development footprint. It revealed some recent service trenches in section, with several transverse cut timbers (of the kind formerly used by the ESB) visible in the north. The cut and backfill of a previously monitored service trench were also encountered in the north of the trench. In the south of the trench the foundations of a former boundary wall previously removed under planning were exposed. Trench 2 was located in the centre of the footprint of the proposed extension. There were no features or finds from this trench other than a continuation of the wall foundation discovered in Trench 1. Trench 3 was located in the east of the proposed extension. The ground in this area was (like the rest of the site) largely composed of densely compacted rubble. The only feature found was the wall foundation seen in the other trenches. No features or finds of archaeological significance were found.
