2013:321 - St Joseph’s Primary School, Lisdrumgullion, Newry, Armagh

This project relates to the demolition of buildings which will be replaced with a new school building. Test trenching was the mitigation recommended for the site, as the work had to be carried out while the school was still in use; the monitoring works had to be undertaken in phases during school holiday periods throughout 2013.

PHASE 1
The test trenching confirmed much of the information from the bore holes and indicates that much of the site has been subject to infill. The material from this infill dates from the late 18th through to the mid-20th centuries, however as mid 20th-century material was present at all levels of the infill it must be assumed that much of this material was deposited within the relatively recent past. The walls which were found in the northern part of the site would appear to have been related to the buildings on the 2nd and 4th edition OS maps and are therefore of no great antiquity, while the cow bones present at the base of Trench 1 are likely to have been mid 19th century in date and directly related to the farm which lay on the site prior to the nunnery being built and again are of no great antiquity.

PHASE 2
The test trenching showed that possible archaeological remains were present to the east of the site, in Trenches 12 and 13, but were not present within Trench 11 and if present had been destroyed in Trench 10. The exact nature of the archaeology remains unclear. Several sections of stone wall were uncovered and their position recorded, though it has not been possible to positively match these walls with buildings recorded on the OS maps. The artefactual material recovered from upper layers suggests that the demolition material was deposited during the 19th century, while lower level artefactual material indicates late 18th-century deposits. Given the construction technique and materials used in the walls that were uncovered it is probable that they date to the 19th century.

PHASE 3
The trenching to the rear of the convent graveyard showed no evidence for archaeological material, beyond the back wall of the nunnery which is well recorded in OS mapping. The trenching at the south-east gate uncovered the original roadway into the site; this was however at a depth of 1m below the current ground surface and as such will be unaffected by the proposed development works.

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