2012:424 - DUNDALK: St Mary's Road, Louth

Unlicensed monitoring of ground works took place in August 2012 during the installation of temporary classrooms at St Mary’s College, St Mary’s Road, Dundalk. The site is situated at the north-east corner of the area enclosed by the defences of the medieval town (LH007-119). A 50m-long trench was excavated across the line of the town defences which at this point, in the 15th century, may have consisted of a ditch and earthen bank (Gosling 1991, 286). A stone wall of mortared limestone, 0.5m thick and aligned north-south, was encountered directly under the tarmac at the location of the town defences. The wall, 0.3m high but continuing below the base of the trench, is the boundary wall that formerly separated St Mary’s College from the Methodist Hall, now part of the school, and is likely to be of 18th-19th-century date. The possibility remains that elements of the town defences survive at deeper levels. Elsewhere in the trench, natural grey clay or marl with sea shells was encountered at depths ranging from 0.5m at the west end to 0.3m at the east end. Dark deposits overlying the natural clay contained crockery of late-19th/early-20th century date.

Reference:
Gosling, P. 1991 ‘From Dun Delca to Dundalk: the topography and archaeology of a medieval frontier town AD c. 1187-1700’, County Louth Archaeological and Historical Journal 22, 217-353.