2008:416 - 24a and 25 Hill Street, Dublin, Dublin

A programme of monitoring for a proposed development at Nos 24a and 25 Hill Street, Dublin 1, was undertaken following on from a testing programme in 2005 (Excavations 2005, No. 447, 05E0354). The site was excavated by mechanical excavator down to the natural subsoil (c. 1–1.5m in depth). No remains associated with the possible cemetery (DU018–020495) were identified.
Nos 24a and 25 Hill Street are located behind the plots of Nos 48 and 47 (respectively) North Great George’s Street, which are protected structures. The plots were originally laid out in the 1780s and belonged to the Archdall family, who let them out, mostly to barristers. The original mews buildings (now called Nos 24a and 25 Hill Street) were constructed in the first half of the 19th century, demolished at the end of that century and replaced with new buildings in 1928, which in turn were demolished recently to make way for the new development.
The monitoring programme identified the remains of all of these phases of construction, and particular attention was given to the excavation of a thin garden soil layer sitting directly over natural subsoil (at 13.75m OD), which was packed with early 18th-century pottery (Westerwald stoneware, glazed red earthenware including Irish-made slip-trailed vessels, black-glazed earthenware, North Devon sgraffito, Bristol-Staffordshire combed slipware, mottled ware, tin-glazed earthenware and creamware). Seven enigmatic features that had been identified in the 2005 testing programme were reinterpreted as circular pits representing the uprooting of trees flanking a garden path.