2007:2023 - Wentworth Place, Wicklow, Wicklow

Monitoring is ongoing since November 2006 on the site of the culvert replacement and foul sewer network upgrade works being carried out at Wentworth Place, Wicklow town, by Wicklow County Council. The area of development is situated within WI025–012 (Wicklow town) and is adjacent to WI025–012(02) (Franciscan friary church, in ruins). Some sherds of medieval pottery and some earlier cobbling under the tarmac of the present road came to light during monitoring in 2006 (Excavations 2006, No. 2195).
In compliance with the planning conditions, trial testing was carried out within the grounds of the Franciscan abbey in 2007. Occasional sherds of post-medieval pottery, animal bones, red-brick fragments, slate roof tiles and mortar fragments were found. A limestone drain of unknown date was found. In 2003, Margaret Gowen & Co. found a drainage feature during testing in the abbey grounds, therefore it was recommended that the limestone drain be excavated.
A total of three features were excavated. These consisted of a linear drain which slightly truncated a pit containing dumped slate, and an irregular linear deposit of alluvial soil.
The features excavated in the abbey grounds did not appear to be of any major archaeological significance. The fill of both the linear drain and the pit containing slates represented discarded rubbish from some building work, possibly carried out on the nearby parochial house. The pottery located at the bottom of these fills suggests that they date from sometime in the last century. The irregular alluvial deposit appears to represent (partially) the former bed of the nearby Ashtown Stream. A modern retaining wall was constructed to hem in the flow of the stream and this wall truncates the deposit. The deposit contained evidence of contact with water, with lenses of iron panning running through the moist clay content, and river gravel also present.