2009:575 - MAIN STREET LOWER, DUNLEER, Louth

The 30m by 25m development site was situated in a yard to the rear of existing premises on the east side of Lower Main Street, in the centre of Dunleer and within the zone of archaeological potential established around the town, LH018–064. At its closest point, the site was c. 25m from the graveyard wall of the Church of Ireland Church, the possible site of the Early-Christian-period church founded by St Forodran in the 6th or 7th century. The first edition of the OS 6-inch map, surveyed 1835, shows the site divided diagonally between orchard on the north-east and open space on the south-west.
Pre-development testing took place on 19 May 2009. Ground level in much of the yard had previously been reduced by up to 0.75m during the recent construction of extensions to the buildings on the street front and was surfaced with stony fill. Removal of the stone surfacing exposed the remaining garden soil. Four sherds of post-medieval pottery were collected from a deposit within the old garden soil, which also contained a quantity of butchered animal bone. Three sherds were of glazed red earthenware of Irish manufacture of 18th-or early 19th-century date; the fourth was black-glazed English ware of similar date. Trenches excavated to the required width and depth of the foundations for the new 9m2 building revealed grey stony silty clay, probably old garden soil, mixed with gravel from the underlying subsoil. No further finds were noted.