2008:896 - Mount Street, Claremorris, Mayo

Testing took place at the site of a proposed mixed-use development between Lower Mount Street and the Inner Relief Road, Claremorris, on 30 January 2008. There is a burial-ground recorded on the first-edition 25-inch OS map (1893–99), situated immediately south of the proposed development site. It is thought that this burial-ground was associated with the workhouse on the south-east outskirts of the town, and originally with a former fever hospital several hundred metres to the north-east of the site. This site was also used for the burial of unbaptised infants, becoming in effect an urban equivalent of the familiar children’s burial-grounds or cillíns which appear in the Irish countryside.
Four trenches were excavated using a tracked excavator fitted with a flat grading bucket. Overall the site appeared to be quite disturbed, with a lot of topsoil already removed and a good deal of fill and made-up ground. Trench 1 unearthed what could be expected from a back garden, including the remains of a number of family pets. Trench 2 contained a number of modern drainage features, including a storm drain, which appeared to be live. Trench 3 uncovered the foundations of what appeared to be two modern rubble and mortar walls. An analysis of the cartographic evidence shows that this may have been the northern boundary wall of the burial-ground shown on the first-edition OS map. It is certainly in the correct location. Rather than two walls, what was found may represent the remains of a dogleg, the test-trench having crossed the wall at a point where both trajectories were picked up.