2007:1556 - SLIGO: Union Street/Emmet Place, Sligo

This excavation identified a length of the town defensive ditch dug in 1689. The ditch was at least 15.3m long, 3.5m wide and 0.6m deep with irregular sides and a flat base. The fills were various brown silt clays. No evidence was found of the apparent turn to the south. The ditch did appear to be rather shallow for a defensive feature but where the ditch has been identified and excavated elsewhere, it has been of a similar cursory depth. No datable finds where recovered from the ditch, apart from red-brick fragments from the uppermost fill, and radiocarbon dating was not an option due to the large amount of root disturbance introducing contamination and the comparatively recent date. Nevertheless, the fills were more than likely of an 18th- and 19th-century date. A likely scenario is a shallow ditch and rampart falling out of use and becoming overgrown, especially in the low-lying, damper ditch. After two centuries of silting, ploughing and sporadic dumping, the ditch was no longer visible as a landscape feature. The wall enclosing the site was proved to be later than the backfilling of the ditch and was not related to the 17th-century town defences as had been previously supposed. The only other features identified were 19th- and 20th-century garden features.