2011:125 - COLERAINE FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, 39 ABBEY STREET, COLERAINE, Derry

The site was located next to Coleraine First Presbyterian Church and was to become an extension to the existing car park. The level was to be reduced to 0.3m below the existing car park level. At the northern end of the site, towards Abbey Street, the level of the site was already below the 0.3m mark and will simply be filled, with no further reduction necessary.

The ground sloped to the south, with the rear of the site being slightly higher than the existing car park. The southern area was reduced down to the 0.3m level using a small digger with a flat-edged bucket. The material at the southern end of the site comprised dark brown topsoil containing a lot of root activity and several sherds of post-medieval/modern creamware pottery. The underlying soil was a light brown clayey loam. This material was not subsoil and appeared to be another layer of fill material. Towards the northern end of the site, the underlying soil changed from a light brown clayey loam to a dark brown clayey loam. This layer contained charcoal flecks and chunks, whole and broken 16th–17th-century handmade bricks and a single sherd of 16th–17th-century Transitional Ware pottery.

From the stratigraphy encountered during the course of monitoring it is possible to explain the various layers on the site. The dark blackish-brown clayey loam located towards the northern half of the site was the only definite archaeological layer encountered. The presence of 16th–17th-century handmade brick and pottery confirms that the layer was at least post-medieval in date and may even cap earlier medieval layers. From the two layers that were encountered at the southern end of the site it would appear that this area was raised at some point in the 19th–20th century. As the layer uncovered at the 0.3m depth was not the natural subsoil, it is likely that this was the original ground level and that the upper material, which was removed, formed a raised area of garden. It is clear from the pottery recovered from these layers that they were built up in the late 19th–early 20th century and were not part of the Plantation defences of Coleraine. It was not possible to ascertain whether the 16th–17th-century layer uncovered in the northern half of the site extended underneath these layers of garden activity.

Monitoring revealed the presence of a probable post-medieval archaeological layer. Though this layer was only exposed at the north of the site, it probably continues underneath the 19th–20th-century layers uncovered at the south of the site. The presence of the 16th–17th-century Transitional Ware is an indicator of early post-medieval activity, and it is distinctly possible that the post-medieval layer covers archaeological material from this period or earlier.

Northern Archaeological Consultancy Ltd, Farset Enterprise Park, 638 Springfield Road, Belfast BT12 7DY