2008:463 - Mount Argus, Harold’s Cross, Dublin

Testing was carried out at a proposed development site located at Mount Argus, Harold’s Cross, Dublin 6W, on 7–9 of October 2008. The site is located c. 50m to the south-east of the modern religious establishment (the Passionist Congregation) of Mount Argus. The site is bounded by the Kimmage Road to the south, Mount Argus monastery and park to the west and Mount Argus Road to the north. The site contains the constraint area for (the former course of) the River Poddle/city watercourse (DU018–04304) and a substantial milling complex is also known to have existed on the site form the early 19th century onwards.
The proposed development involves the construction of a new apartment complex consisting of five separate apartment buildings, ranging from two to six storeys (a total of 211 apartment units), over single basement carpark (comprising 309 basement car parking spaces), a single-storey community building and an ESB substation situated to the north-west of the site. The development also comprises the demolition of a sports hall, the construction of two new vehicular entrances (from the Kimmage Road Lower and Mount Argus Road) to the basement carpark, attenuation areas, the realignment of the existing course of the River Poddle, a water feature and landscaping and boundary treatments.
A geophysical survey was carried out at the proposed site (08R0208) by Benjamin Thebaudeau of Margaret Gowen & Co. Ltd. The testing programme was designed to examine the veracity of the results of the geophysical survey.
The proposed assessment planned to comprise of the excavation of six test-trenches, positioned throughout the site. However a complete assessment of the surviving archaeological remains on the proposed site could not be carried out, as upon the initial excavation of Trench 1 it became apparent that the site was utilised as a refuse tip from approximately the late 1930s until the late 1980s. As the assessment progressed this trend continued and intensified (with up to 1–2.5m of backfilled refuse noted throughout the entire site). This led to a change in the planned methodology. Due to the depth of the backfilled refuse deposits it was unsafe (high risk of trench collapse plus exposure to contaminated soils) and in fact not possible to excavate the entire length of each proposed trench to subsoil level; therefore it was decided to excavate a series of test-pits along the proposed line of each test-trench in order to assess the underlying archaeological remains.
The testing programme also established that the modern backfilled refuse deposit encountered throughout the site had an adverse affect on the geophysical survey distorting the results.
The assessment did, however, identify the former course the River Poddle/city watercourse and associated millponds in the north-west corner of the site and a post-medieval building associated with the 19th-century milling complex formerly located on the site. However, due to the amount of modern refuse material overlying the site, the test-pits could not provide the necessary information to establish a complete evaluation of the surviving archaeological remains on-site and an additional programme of testing was recommended.