2010:601 - Abbey Street and Charlotte Street,Abbeyquarter North, Sligo, Sligo

On 24 September 2010, the writer was asked by Eoin Halpin, ADS Belfast, to oversee the remainder of the enhancement works at Abbey Street Car park, just opposite Sligo Abbey. They had begun sometime earlier and had been suspended until a ministerial consent was put in place.
Monitoring was undertaken for the following works: Trenches for ducting were opened; some areas that had been partly excavated were either tidied up or finished; piles of material that had been dug out were sifted through; finds were collected. Works requiring an archaeological presence ended on 8 October.
The soil deposits, much of which were previously disturbed, contained quantities of human bone, animal bone, oyster shell, crockery, glass, slate, etc. One pit had been opened prior to archaeological involvement to a depth of 1.8 m. The soil from this pit contained several human bones. While the bones have yet to be analysed, several human bones, including a skull, were found at other locations across the carpark. Curious is the paucity of human teeth.
It is well known that human bone was ‘all over the place’ in Sligo Abbey in the early 18th and mid-19th centuries. These bones were occasionally cleared out and dumped across the road from the abbey; i.e. where this carpark has been for some years.
Almost all the finds are from disturbed contexts. This initial sorting of the bones, finds and shells brought the number of bags of retained material to 72: 44 of bones, 19 of unsorted finds, 8 of shell and 1 of soil sample. These bags contain from about 2.5 litres in volume down to a single bone or shard of pottery. Some of the pottery appears to be possibly as early as the 17th century.
In working one area along Charlotte Street, differential colouring of the soil began to show: orange sterile soil to the south and dark-brown mixed soil to the north of an east–west line. The fill was of dark-brown soil with crushed shell and a small deposit of bone: one big piece and some small pieces, found close together. The differential colouring was a ditch which was curving slightly to north at the west end of the exposed area about 10m in from the inner edge of Charlotte Street. Eoin Halpin confirmed that what appeared to be a ‘north–south’ ditch had been found 150m to the west. The 2010 trench seemed to line up to confirm an enclosing ditch around the abbey.
There was no evidence of a bank to the south of the ditch; that area had been levelled perhaps centuries ago. The ground north of the ditch was not exposed; the old car park surface was not lifted, so we do not know the width of the ditch nor if there was an accompanying northern bank.
From present knowledge, it would seem that the ditch would continue around the Abbey. This ditch in all certainty crosses Charlotte Street to the east, but there is no indication of the enclosure on the OS maps and it has always been built over since the invention of aerial photography. The exposed ditch was sealed off with terram and stone.
Work for the kerbing, ducting for lights, ducting for storm-water, paving, footpaths, etc., was monitored. None of this penetrated below the modern sands.
Some of the knowledge lost, because there was no archaeologist on-site from the outset, was recovered.