2012:066 - Carlow Main Drainage Scheme, Carlow (Urban District)/Moanacurragh/Chaplestown/Kernanstown/Polleton, Carlow

The monitoring for the Scheme was carried out by this Company over a period of 88 weeks between June 2010 and May 2012. Over the course of the scheme, the work was monitored by licensee Judith Carroll, and archaeologists Ken Wiggins, Dan Devereux, Sinead Phelan and Michael Greiner.
The town was very comprehensively covered by the various works comprising the Scheme. The construction of new pipelines was not limited to the core historic town, located on the east side of the river Barrow, and on the north side of the River Burrin that drains into it, centred on the intersection of Castle Street, Dublin Street, Tullow Street and Burrin Street, but took in the wider network of roads and housing developments of the suburban communities that knit together to form the greater Carlow town limits. The main access roads of the town – the Portlaoise road, the Kilkenny road, the Dublin road, the Tullow road and so forth – were each subject in varying measure to construction works related to the Scheme. In addition, one greenfield area outside the town, in the townland of Chapelstown, along the north bank of the river Burrin, was also the scene of pipe-laying works of the Scheme.
The most significant finds were of in situ human burial remains excavated on and around Castle Hill, Kennedy Street and Mill Lane, indicating a burial ground and supporting earlier historical/archaeological evidence for a medieval ecclesiastical site on Castle Hill. The radiocarbon dating by Queens University Belfast (QUB) of four individual burials in different areas of Castle Hill/Kennedy Street and Mill Lane turned out to centre on the 14th century. It is suggested that the burials related to a disused graveyard on Castle Hill (directly north of Carlow Castle). The site is known locally as the ‘old graveyard’ as well as ‘Croghan na Relige’ and is reputed to be the medieval site of St Mary’s Abbey.

 The site of the ‘Castle graveyard’ (OS 6 inch map 1908)

A number of other archaeological features and finds were also uncovered. A C14 date of the 17^th/18^th century for a burial relating to St Mary’s Church on Church Street, which was known to have been built in the 17^th century, was produced by QUB from skeletal remains. A date of 3429+/- 41 BP for a burnt feature in Chaplestown, close to a number of barrow-type monuments of prehistoric date, was also obtained. Medieval pits producing pottery of mainly 13^th-century date were found on Kennedy Street and Castle Street. A number of other features were described in (Excavations 2010, No. 74 and Excavations 2011, No. 46).

Medicine bottles found in pit to rear of St Killian’s Crescent, Carlow Town, dating to around 1900.

Judith Carroll & Company Ltd, Consultant Archaeologists, 11 Anglesea Street, Temple Bar, Dublin 2