County: Longford Site name: Ardagh
Sites and Monuments Record No.: LF019–051 Licence number: 10E0245
Author: Dominic Delany, Dominic Delany & Associates, Unit 3, Howley Court, Oranmore, Co. Galway.
Site type: Post-medieval
Period/Dating: —
ITM: E 620073m, N 769078m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 53.671063, -7.696219
Monitoring of topsoil removal and foundation excavations took place at Ardagh Demesne, Co. Longford, which is in the vicinity of a church and graveyard, in advance of the construction of an extension to the local national school. The site was largely made-up ground dating from the construction of the school in the early 1980s. A layer of redeposit, 0.25m thick, underlay the topsoil over much of the site and this in turn overlay a 125mm-thick layer of grey silty clay with inclusions of decayed stone. The grey silty clay overlay the original topsoil comprising compact grey/brown silt with occasional stone inclusions. Finds from the topsoil are typically post-medieval and include a clay-pipe stem fragment, a red earthenware potsherd with internal brown slip and glaze, and a white delphware plate sherd. Nothing of archaeological significance was found.
