2010:645 - The Former Omagh General Hospital, Woodside Avenue, Omagh, Tyrone

The redevelopment on the site of the former Omagh General Hospital involved the demolition of the existing complex and the construction of a children’s respite centre, an associated play area, landscaping and car-parking. An existing childcare facility at the site will be retained. The associated play area will be constructed on the current surface and will not entail any ground disturbance.
The proposed development is located within an archaeologically sensitive landscape with seven recorded sites within a 2km radius. The most notable of these are the O’Neill castle (TYR035–019), a Franciscan friary (TYR035–021), founded in 1464 on the site of an earlier Columban monastery, and the historic settlement of Omagh (TYR035–016) itself, founded when the Columban monastery was built in ad 792.
Omagh General Hospital was originally a fever hospital associated with the Omagh Union Workhouse. The Omagh Poor Law Union was established in 1839 and the Union Workhouse was opened on 24 August 1841. Prior to the famine, the area outside the Dead House eastwards and westwards, as far as the yard doors on either side, was utilised as the burial-ground. However, as the famine took hold on the local population and fever spread, it became clear that the workhouse could not deal adequately with the influx of people and the spread of disease. A purpose-built fever hospital was eventually built sometime between 1847 and 1854 to the north of the workhouse. The hospital cared for fever patients and later specialised in infectious diseases. A burial-ground was indicated on cartographic sources to the east of the fever hospital and burials were uncovered during monitoring by Brian Sloan of the construction of an after-schools facility in this location in 2007 (Excavations 2007, No. 1786, AE/07/29). Geophysical survey confirmed local knowledge and cartographic evidence of a similar burial-ground to the west of the fever hospital.
Monitoring of the groundworks associated with the construction of a new carpark within the development took place in December 2009. A service trench for a drainage run was excavated and monitored in January 2010 during which archaeological deposits were encountered in the form of burials. The burials were encountered quite close to the present ground surface and it is likely that they would have been exposed during the construction of the original car park. In addition, a number of the pre-existing service trenches which traversed this site had also disturbed these burials.
A total of 45 burials were excavated between December 2009 and February 2010 in this location, Area 1. Twenty-nine burials lay within grave-cuts, thirteen burials had no surviving grave-cut and three graves contained no surviving bone.
Although there was no obvious formality to the burial site, the remains of a stone wall immediately south of the burials appeared to mark a boundary, beyond which there were apparently no burials. There was no definite feature marking an eastern boundary; however, the burials did not extend towards the current Early Days playground where burials had been encountered during previous testing by CAF, so this appears to be a geographically separate burial plot. The northern limit of the burials as uncovered was marked by a 19th-century red-brick culvert; the presence of some disarticulated human bones in the trench for this culvert would indicate that this was inserted after the area had been in use as a burial-ground for some time. The scope of the Area 1 excavations did not extend much beyond the culvert to the north; however, where it did, no burials were uncovered.
Monitoring of ground reduction to the west of Area 1 took place in December 2010 and it was soon obvious that the burials extended east–west across this entire area. This phase of excavation, Area 2, took place during December 2010 and January 2011. In total an additional 41 burials were uncovered in this area. They were situated on the same general alignment as the burials uncovered in Area 1 and were also bounded by the east–west-aligned wall to the south and the red-brick culvert to the north.
Like the burials in Area 1 there was no set rule for the direction in which the burials were placed. However, the majority were on a rough east–west alignment with the head to the west. There was some overlay of burials towards the south of this area next to the boundary wall, but in general the burials were evenly spaced. There was evidence that all of the burials had been placed in coffins, with the degree of preservation varying markedly across the site. In some cases only coffin nails survived, whereas in others the entire coffin, including the lid, were more or less intact. Similarly the degree of preservation of bone also varied greatly, as was also observed in Area 1.
In total 86 burials were excavated from both Areas 1 and 2, an area measuring approximately 600m². Six groupings were identified based on orientation of the burials and stratigraphic relationships. At this early stage (pre-analysis) it seems that in Area 1 there were sixteen adults, nineteen juveniles and seven which were not intact enough to provide a reasonable estimate of age at this stage. In addition there were three burials where no skeletal remains were preserved.
In Area 2 there were 26 adults, six juveniles and four infants as well as one burial which consisted of a group of disarticulated bone, one burial which was preserved in situ and there were two juvenile and one infant burial in which no bone survived. In total this is 43 adults, 27 juveniles, five infants and eleven others, as well as a significant amount of disarticulated bone where burials had been disturbed.