County: Monaghan Site name: Mullaghmonaghan, Monaghan
Sites and Monuments Record No.: N/A Licence number: 07E0675
Author: James McKee, Archaeological Development Services Ltd, 110 Amiens Street, Dublin 1.
Site type: Urban – 19th-century garden
Period/Dating: —
ITM: E 667236m, N 833555m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 54.246423, -6.968363
Testing was conducted at the rear of 6–8A Hill Street, Monaghan town, in the townland of Mullaghmonaghan in July 2007. The site was located on the east-facing slope of a ridge, overlooking the town. The development consisted of the reconstruction and restoration of a number of buildings and outhouses along Hill Street and the construction of 22 new houses to the rear of the property, and associated works. There are several areas of archaeological and historical interest in this area and the site itself lay within the zone of potential for Monaghan town (M0009–060), which includes the area of the 17th-century town and ‘an area just outside this to allow for the possibility of extramural development’ (Urban Survey).
Five test-trenches located undisturbed natural subsoil consisting of dark-brown stony clay 0.25–1.1m below present ground level. Immediately overlying the subsoil was fill consisting of dark-grey sandy gravel and topsoil consisting of friable dark-brown loam with few stones and occasional modern ceramic, coal, glass, slate, red brick, shell, bone and plastic fragments.
The base of a north–south-running garden boundary wall and ditch backfilled in the 19th/20th centuries was found and could be observed as a slight rise running 40m north–south across the south side of the site. The garden boundary is absent on Neville’s map of 1787 but appears on the first-edition (1840) and second-edition (1864) OS maps. It is, however, absent on the third-edition (1909) OS map.
Nothing of archaeological significance was uncovered on site.
