2007:1548 - 9–10, CASTLE Street, ABBEYQUARTER SOUTH, SLIGO, Sligo

Castle Street is part of the main east–west axis of old Sligo town, where there were 15th- to 17th-century ‘castles’, as opposed to the Fitzgerald castle of 1245 or the de Burgo castle of 1310, which were on the site of the present town hall.
This property included a number of commercial and social concerns in the 20th century, having earlier served as dwellings over shops.
Following scrub clearance the tops of windows or doors indicated the buried basement of the former building. This had 3m of fill, stones, mainly rectangular, in a mortar and sand mix with all sorts of modern rubbish included; two fragments of 17th-century sandstone roof slate (Timoney 2007–2008) were found. The idea of constructing a basement section in this area was rejected by Sligo Corporation on the basis of over-density within this small site.
The northern 6m of the existing return to No. 9 was demolished, as were several of the internal walls of this return; the north ‘half’ of the site was levelled up by introducing 3' stone. Following on this, up to 100 100–110mm boreholes were spaced throughout the whole site.
In the digging of 1m2 pad holes, some of which reached to depths of 1.2m before natural was reached, under the streetfront building and the return, some crockery, glass, bone and oyster shell was recovered. Further fragments of 17th-century roof slate were found. Similar material was found under the footpath during a cut for accessing the sewer on the opposite side of the street but nothing under the street itself.
There was nothing other than the 17th-century roof slates to indicate pre-early-19th-century activity on the site.
Reference
Timoney, M.A. 2007–2008: Roofing stones of sandstone, schist or shale. The Corran Herald 40, 46.