County: Dublin Site name: NORTH LOTTS PUMPING STATION, NEW WAPPING STREET/SHERIFF STREET
Sites and Monuments Record No.: N/A Licence number: 09E0375
Author: Melanie McQuade
Site type: Post-medieval reclamation and waterlogged wooden remains potentially of prehistoric date
Period/Dating: —
ITM: E 717487m, N 734536m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 53.347981, -6.235432
Monitoring revealed c. 3m of modern rubble and post-medieval reclamation deposits across the site. These contained varying levels of contamination. Sherds of 18th–19th-century pottery were recovered from the lower reclamation deposits, which sealed c. 2m of estuarine sands and silts. These silts overlaid a deposit of coarse river gravels, and boulder clay lay c. 9m below existing ground.
Several fragmented structural remains were identified in the sandy silt deposit at levels of between -1.39m and -1.43m OD. These remains comprised c. 50 horizontal brushwoods that extended over an area of c. 13m by 4m in the central part of the site. The brushwoods ranged from 0.03m to 1.3m in length and from 10mm to 55mm in diameter, and several of the pieces had worked ends. Another similar cluster of brushwoods (3m by 3.6m) was identified c. 15m to the north-east. The arrangement of the surviving wood pieces did not, however, retain the original form of the structures from which they came. There were no in situ pegs and none of the pieces could be described as stakes. The remains may be parts of larger structures, possibly fish-traps that had been damaged and displaced by the tide. In addition to these remains, several ex situ pieces of worked wood were recovered during monitoring of bulk excavations across the site.
Post-excavation analysis is ongoing and it is hoped that radiocarbon determinations can be obtained from the wooden remains.
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