2007:1403 - CASTLE STREET, TRIM, Meath

An assessment was carried out to accompany an application to demolish the existing buildings on three adjacent sites and replace them with a mixed commercial and residential development. The site consisted of three adjacent pieces of urban property: Nos 14 and 15 Castle Street, Trim, and part of the rear of the Abbey Lodge public house on the south side of Market Street. No ground was available at No. 14, as the entire lot is covered by buildings. One trench was proposed, in the licence application, for the rear of No. 15. It was not possible to carry out testing on this property as it is currently rented. Two trenches were proposed, and excavated, for the rear of The Abbey Lodge on the south side of Market Street. The testing was carried out by mechanical excavator on 5 March 2007.
Trench 1 measured 20m by 2m and was located on the western side of the yard to the rear of The Abbey Lodge licensed premises. At the northern end of Trench 1, F6 occurred at c. 0.9m below ground level. It was brown silty clay with occasional charcoal flecks, and contained one sherd of medieval pottery. F7 crossed Trench 1 from east to west at 9.5–13.5m from the northern end of the trench. It was a very gradually sloping U-shaped linear cut, filled with 90% angular stones, 0.04–0.08m long. It was not possible to discern the matrix in which these stones occurred. No inclusions were observed in this material. Beneath F7 was F8, a band of mid-brown clayey silt, with occasional inclusions of animal bone and charcoal, and one sherd of medieval pottery. F8 was 2.2m wide and crossed the trench from east to west at a depth of 1.2m below ground level. F9 was a band of dark-brown/purple peat, with inclusions of shell and lime mortar. It was 2.6m wide and crossed the trench from east to west. F10 was grey silt with inclusions of charcoal flecks, bone and one sherd of medieval pottery, which occurred beneath F9, and apparently was sealed by it. F11 was brown silty clay with occasional charcoal flecks, which occurred at a depth of 1.1m below ground level in the southern end of Trench 1.
Trench 2 measured 30m by 2m and was located on the eastern side of the yard to the rear of The Abbey Lodge licensed premises. The soil profile at the northern end of the trench was 0.2m stony hardcore over 0.5m of dark-brown silty clay garden soil with inclusions of brick and animal bone over 0.3m of yellow clay with moderately occurring stones. In the north-west corner of Trench 2 an anomaly occurred. It was an area, c. 1m2, of 80% angular stone, in a yellow sandy clay matrix, with occasional animal-bone inclusions. It occurred c. 0.9m below ground level. It did not contain any artefacts and did not appear to be archaeological. At 3.2–4.2m from the northern end of Trench 2, F1 was an irregularly shaped area of dark-brown silty clay in the eastern side of the trench. One sherd of medieval pottery lay in the top of this material. Machine work ceased at 1.3m below ground level, the top of F1. A sondage 0.3m wide was inserted by hand to establish the depth and nature of the material. F1 lay on top of orange/green silty clay with inclusions of decayed stone and angular stones. It extended beneath the yellow clay in both northern and southern directions.
The deposit was 0.25m deep and contained inclusions of animal bone and shell.
In total twelve sherds of medieval pottery were recovered from the sondage.
The central part of Trench 2 was composed of 0.2m of stony hardcore over yellow clay with occasional stones, archaeologically sterile to a depth of 1m. At 9m south of the northern end of Trench 2, a purple-brown peat layer, F3, occurred. It crossed the trench from east to west in a band 7m wide. F3 had inclusions of shell, bone and lime mortar. The top of this layer was 0.7m below ground level. It apparently sealed a layer of grey silty clay, which had inclusions of shell and animal bone and was not numbered in Trench 2. At 12m from the northern end of the trench, the trench cut through F2, a band of 80–90% angular stone, in a yellow silty clay matrix, which occurred from the surface to a depth of 0.7m. This material contained one shell fragment and one brick fragment, and was interpreted in Trench 2 as a linear cut with modern stone fill. In the south-west corner of Trench 2, F5 occurred at 0.7–0.8m below ground level. It was grey/brown clay, with occasional inclusions of shell and charcoal flecks. Three sherds of medieval pottery and a fragment of animal bone were recovered from the top of F5. The trench was extended westwards by a 6m length, also 2m wide, to find the extent of F5. Its limit westwards was not established. On its eastern side, it was bordered by red/brown clay, in which artefacts were not observed. The northern end of Trench 2 began 0.6m south of the southern edge of the cement yard to the rear of the Abbey Lodge pub. The northern 7m of Trench 2 were excavated to 1.35m deep; the central 16m was excavated to 1m deep and the southern 7m was 0.6m deep.
From the testing carried out the following conclusions can be drawn. Archaeological material came to light at c. 1m below present ground level at the northern end of the trenches, and c. 0.6m below ground level at the southern end. The ground to the rear (south) of the Abbey Lodge pub has been built up by a layer of redeposited subsoil, 0.6–1m thick, which is archaeologically sterile. Beneath this layer F1, 3, 4, 5 (Trench 2), and F6, 8, 9 (same as F3), 10 (same as F4) and 11 (same as F5) (Trench 1) all apparently date to the medieval period. These features together may represent the activity layer from the medieval period in this part of the town. The linear feature with very stony fill – F2 (Trench 2)/F7 (Trench 1) – crossed both trenches from east to west. The top of the stony fill of this feature was at present ground level. It did not contain any artefacts to enable dating. No medieval structures came to light, although the occurrence of lime mortar in F3 (Trench 2) and in F9 (Trench 1) may indicate building remains in the vicinity. No pits or linear features conclusively dated to the medieval period were disclosed by the testing. F1, from the sondage in Trench 2, can be dated conclusively to the medieval period, and was also shown to be rich in artefacts, the small sondage yielding twelve sherds of medieval pottery. These conclusions are based on the sample excavation represented by the two trenches excavated.