2009:574 - 45 SEATOWN, DUNDALK, Louth

Test-trenches were excavated on 14–15 July 2009 on a site for a house in fulfilment of a condition of planning permission. The site was an infill vacant plot, 33m long and 6m wide, situated on the north side of Seatown, a broad east–west street which formed the core of the medieval suburb on the east side of the walled town of Dundalk.
Previous investigations in Seatown by the writer have generally exposed, within 0.3m of the present ground surface, the natural sand and gravel of the glacial ridge on which the street was aligned (Excavations 2003, No. 1269, 03E0477). From at least 1680, the date of Richardson’s map, the street has been lined with houses. A Valentine postcard of 1900–1910 shows single-storey thatched cottages at the development site, the last of which stood on the adjacent site, No. 43, until its recent demolition.
Before testing, the site overall had been reduced to c. 0.2m below footpath level as a result of recent development work on adjoining properties. Site clearance exposed old garden soil and natural subsoil over most of the site to the rear of the earlier house, apparently already demolished by 1938–9. All the foundation trenches necessary for the development were excavated as part of the archaeological investigation. The old garden soil was 0.4m deep at the rear of the site and overlay natural gravel. Two sherds of 19th-century pottery were retained: the rim of a sgraffito-decorated dish probably from the local Rockmarshall/Bellurgan kilns and a plate with the stamp of James Vernon, Burslem, Stoke-on-Trent, in operation 1841–80.
On the footprint of the new house, most of the garden soil had been removed by site clearance and survived only in patches. Towards the front of the site, extending c. 5m from the street frontage, the trenches exposed stony greyish-brown silty clay extending to the base of the trench at a depth of 0.45m. Natural subsoil was not exposed. The only artefact recovered from this deposit was a piece of post-medieval/modern imported roof slate. Some cockle and oyster shells occurred at the surface. This deposit approximately coincides with the location of the previous house on the site, probably of 19thcentury date, and may represent a foundation layer or material from the time of its demolition in the 1930s.