County: Dublin Site name: COACH ROAD, BALROTHERY
Sites and Monuments Record No.: N/A Licence number: 10E0124
Author: Kieran Campbell, 6 St Ultans, Laytown, Co. Meath.
Site type: Post-medieval
Period/Dating: —
ITM: E 719999m, N 761425m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 53.588946, -6.187458
Pre-development testing took place on 21 April 2010 on a site for a terrace of three houses on the west side of Coach Road, Balrothery, in fulfilment of a condition of planning permission. The site is in the centre of the village, 110m north-east of the medieval St Peter’s Church and graveyard (DU005–009). Balrothery was evidently a medieval settlement but did not have borough status. The Civil Survey 1654–56 refers to the ‘towne of Balrothery’ and lists a number of burnt tenements, small houses and crofts within the bounds. Maps by Rocque (1760) and Taylor and Skinner (1783) show Coach Road lined with houses. On the OS first-edition 6-inch map (1843) the development site is shown with a cottage on the street front and an open field to the rear.
The infill site, 22m by 32m, was bounded on three sides by recent new buildings. Three walls of a single-storey stone cottage at the roadside, converted into a shed, were possibly the remains of the cottage shown in 1843. This area was to be used for car-parking. Extensive test-trenching by Claire Cotter on the adjacent site to the west the development site, in the grounds of The Balrothery Inn, uncovered evidence of medieval agricultural activity in the form of plough furrows, a stone wall and medieval pottery (Excavations 2006, No. 567, 06E0557).
Test-trenches by a JCB revealed garden soil/ploughsoil, up to 0.9m deep, over subsoil consisting of gravel or firm yellow/brown clay. There was little variation in the garden soil and only a small number of items were noted in it; i.e. animal bone, flowerpot and brick fragments.
