2014:361 - 20-26 Scarva Street, Bovennett, Loughbrickland, Down

The excavation took place after monitoring identified four features of interest. These were identified as: a culvert [C8] which appears to have taken water to a pump situated in the old town square, a shallow pit [C17] which contained a 18th- and 19th-century artefacts, a brick and stone built pit [C13] which was used in conjunction with fire and a pit full of stones [C10] along the length of a small drain.

During the removal of topsoil and overburden for excavation one further feature was uncovered, a drain [C23] which is possibly located on the OS 2nd Edition 6-inch map of 1860.

It is clear from looking at the artefacts from within the topsoil, those from spread F16 and the other features on this site, that the site has been disturbed on many occasions, evident from the mix of 17th-20th-century artefacts found across the site. The first activity on the site appears to have been the building of the culvert and the houses, the buildings on this plot were then demolished between 1835 and 1860. The site was then fully enclosed within a wall and the ground within was built up with fill and garden feature. Later a drain was added and finally the whole site was then topped off with topsoil. This mixing of the material on the site has made the dating of the features difficult, as artefacts could be intrusive both within the main fills and within the top fill. One thing was clear, there were no features on the site which pre-dated the 18th century.

The earliest two features on the site were the two pits, C13 and C17, these both appear to predate the levelling of the plot with F16 and the demolishing of the houses seen on the 1st edition OS map of 1835. The shallow pit C17 contained coins dating to 1766-1782 which were deliberately buried under a layer of stones, the pottery from the same pit dates from the 18th–19th century which suggests that the pit is late and that the earlier finds were either being deliberately thrown away or were intrusive. The second pit C13 was clearly some kind of small industrial feature dated to the 18th century; unfortunately within the chamber there were no artefacts which would suggest a use, because of this it is impossible to know what it was used for other than to say that it involved heat.

The full list of artefacts from C17 were pottery (Find No. 67-80), clay pipe stems (Find No. 65-66), iron (Find No.43-44), 19th-century copper alloy barrel tap (Find No.45), glass (Find No.46-61) and eight copper coins (Find No. 1-8). The coins were very corroded and covered in concretions which made identification difficult. One of the coins (Find No.1) appears to be a George III ½ penny dated 1766 – 1782, possibly part of the Bust 1 run which dated to 1769. A second coin (Find No. 2) appears to be a George III ½ penny dated 1766 – 1782, possibly part of the Bust 2 run which is dated 1774 – 1782. Three of the coins have the Hibernia harp with the face either not visible or not identifiable (Find No. 4-6), one coin has the Hibernia harp and a date 1782 which makes it a George III half penny (Find No.3) and finally two of the coins are completely unreadable (Find No. 7-8).

Unfortunately it was impossible to identify when the culvert was built although it appears that it dates to the building of the houses which could be as early as 16th – 17th century. The culvert C8 does not appear on any of the maps but it does appear to run towards the pump which is still in the centre of what was the market square; this pump is listed under HB17/03/057. It is thought that the pump was supplied only from a well but the location of the culvert suggests that the well may have been partially topped up with rain water from the culvert.

The site did not contain any remnants of the two structures recorded on the 1st edition OS map, it is likely that as the subsoil is of such good quality that the foundations were placed directly on to the subsoil rather than being placed in a cut trench. This building style was continued in the layer boundary wall C3 S4 which also had no foundation trench; this wall was not on the 1st edition OS map of 1835 but it was on the 2nd edition OS map of 1860 and it disappears again by the 4th edition map OS of 1955.

It is possible that some of the rubble from the demolition of the buildings on the 1st edition OS map was used in the drains [C23 and C10] which ran across the site, with some of it being mixed within F16 but as there was not a huge amount of rubble within these features it is clear that most of the stone was used elsewhere. The mixing in of this older material across the site could have led to older artefacts becoming mixed into the upper layers of features.

The most recent feature on the site is the large drain C23 which appeared to be filled with building rubble. It is possible that this drain is the garden feature visible on the 2nd edition OS map of 1860. It is possible that this drain was put in to aid in the keeping of animals on the plot as it was now completely walled in. The garden feature on the 2nd edition map clearly runs from an inner wall all the way down the plot, it clearly corresponds to both wall C3 and the drain C23.

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