County: Galway Site name: 16 Merchants Road Lower, Galway
Sites and Monuments Record No.: GA094-100 Licence number: 08E752 EXT.
Author: Richard Crumlish Lecka Grove
Site type: Urban
Period/Dating: —
ITM: E 529765m, N 724927m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 53.269789, -9.052325
Monitoring of groundworks at a development at No. 16 Lower Merchants Road in Galway City was carried out on 17 and 18 June and 17 September 2013. The development consisted of the demolition of a house and shed and the construction of a new house in its place. The site is within the constraint for Galway GA094-100), albeit outside the line of the medieval town wall. This part of Galway was reclaimed from Galway Bay during the post-medieval period.
The development was part of the adjacent Solas Galway Picture Place project at No. 15 Lower Merchants Road where monitoring of groundworks under Licence No. 08E752? (Ext.) had been undertaken. The monitoring of groundworks at the adjacent site revealed evidence from the post-medieval and modern periods, much of it related to the early 19th-century building (No. 15, which was part of the same terrace as No. 16) which was demolished prior to the development commencing. The building at No. 16 consisted of a 2-bay, 2-storey late Georgian dwelling, part of a terrace on Lower Merchants Road, dating to c. 1830. To the rear of the house was a flat roofed extension, a back yard and a shed.
The proposed groundworks consisted of reduction in levels over the entire site, including those for a raft foundation for the new dwelling and for a foundation for a new shed. Monitoring of groundworks revealed evidence of modern activity associated with the early 19th-century building which stood on the site. Nothing of archaeological significance was in evidence.
Castlebar Road, Ballinrobe, Co. Mayo
