County: Tipperary Site name: Abbey Road, CLonmel
Sites and Monuments Record No.: N/A Licence number: 08E0771
Author: Bernice Molloy, Margaret Gowen & Co. Ltd, 27 Merrion Square, Dublin 2.
Site type: Urban, post-medieval
Period/Dating: —
ITM: E 619068m, N 622256m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 52.351564, -7.720106
A test excavation was carried out for a proposed development on Abbey Road, Clonmel, Co. Tipperary. The site is located c. 380m west of the historic core of Clonmel town (TS083–019). The site is bound to the north by Abbey Road, to the south by the River Suir, to the west by residential development and to the east by Convent Road. The site of the proposed development was once occupied by the first Clonmel Union workhouse, which itself was an adaptation of an existing House of Industry, constructed in 1811. By 1904 the workhouse had become the Auxiliary District Lunatic Asylum for males and by the 1950s it was a canning factory. The site is currently occupied by a disused meat factory,
. The building has been heavily compromised during its use as a meat factory but the cartographic evidence (first- and second-edition OS maps, revised OS map 1951) would suggest that the current building has in fact incorporated the walls of the earlier structures on-site, mainly the additions to the buildings after 1841, but also possibly some of the original building as constructed in 1811.
Nine test-trenches and two test-pits were excavated throughout the development area. Test-trenching identified features depicted in the second-edition OS map and the revised-edition OS map, such as walls and a fountain. No burials were identified in the test excavation. A building survey and archaeological monitoring was identified on foot of the findings of the test excavation.
