2012:024 - Carrick Public Realm, Carrickfergus, Antrim

Monitoring of public realm works at Carrickfergus was carried out over a period of two months between March – May 2012. Public realm works included the replacement of existing sewage and watermain pipes along with new pedestrian walkways and street furniture. Monitoring of groundworks was confined primarily to deep excavation pipe replacement along High Street, Marine Highway outside Carrickfergus castle, North Street and Market Place. Monitoring of a 2-2.5m-deep pipe excavation along both the north and south sides of High Street revealed this portion of Carrick contained up to 1.5m of archaeological infill material consisting of a black gritty silt containing animal bone, oyster shell and post-medieval pottery sandwiched between lower natural sands and clay and upper modern overburden. Monitoring of a 1–1.2m deep pipe trench along North Street and Marine Highway revealed that these area of the town contained modern overburden and demolition infill deposits to this depth. Monitoring of a pipe trench along the upper portion of Market Place revealed the existence of three ditch features which appeared to extend across the lower portion of the street in a north–south direction. Two of the ditches were quite shallow and may solely represent drainage features while the third ditch, which was located at the eastern end of Market Place, proved to be more substantial. Revealing the full extent of this ditch proved difficult as invert levels within the pipe trench did not extend to full depth and a modern electrical pipe obscured its outer edge, however it appeared that the ditch was potentially 3m wide, and at least 0.5m deep containing a peaty material from which a sherd of potential medieval pottery was recovered. The ditch had been sealed with an infill material consisting of a gravelly sandy clay containing a lot of animal bone.

FarrimondMacManus BT3 Business Centre, 10 Dargan Crescent, Belfast BT3 9JP