2013:041 - Blanchardstown IDA Business and Technology Park, Snugborough, Dublin

A programme of monitoring was undertaken at the Hexagon Buildings, Blanchardstown Industrial Estate, Snugborough Road, Blanchardstown (Snugborough townland), Dublin 15, in September and October 2013. A mound (DU013-014) located 300m west of the site may be the remains of a later prehistoric burial mound or possibly an estate feature. The absence of cartographic depictions of such a substantial feature may also suggest an even more modern origin.

Monitoring took place of topsoil stripping in a green field prior to the construction of a warehouse. Topsoil was extremely shallow (5-200mm) suggesting the site had been previously stripped of topsoil sometime in the recent past, probably during the landscaping of the IDA Park, and a small mound in the north-west of the site turned out to be modern in origin. The underlying subsoil was mostly undisturbed except for some areas of modern building disturbance from the last fifty years, and a large area of scorched natural subsoil and charcoal-rich cut features in the centre of the site resulting from the burning of a 19^th-century field boundary hedge which was identified on the 1840s OS map. A 2m wide east-west-running truncated drain or ditch surviving to a depth of 0.15m was identified at the eastern edge of the building footprint, filled with dark bluish-brown clayish-silt. This contained 19^th- and 20^th-century material and is likely to be an in-filled field boundary or drainage feature, however it does not correlate with cartographic sources. No archaeological material was identified within the building footprint.

Archaeology Plan, 32 Fitzwilliam Place, Dublin 2