2014:608 - DUNGANNON: Irish Street, Tyrone

Monitoring of ground reduction works within the footprint of proposed social housing at 45 Irish Street, Dungannon uncovered earlier activity associated with the historic development of Dungannon town in the form of a substantial 18th-century boundary ditch and a smaller, later, garden plot ditch. This ditch underwent archaeological excavation in accordance with planning policy guidelines.

Monitoring revealed that while construction levels within the southern end of the site did not extend beyond modern overburden, a reduced level dig within the central/northern end of the site did extend into natural subsoil deposits uncovering the partial remains of a substantial post-medieval ditch. The ditch appears to extend largely along the same alignment as the plot boundary suggesting that it represents an earlier land boundary upon whose alignment Irish Street may have been based. Pottery finds recovered from the ditch fills range in date from the 17th – 19th centuries with a many overlapping into the 18th century suggesting that the ditch dates to this period. The function of the ditch is difficult to interpret, the early 18th-century map of Dungannon depicts the site as being an area of gardens, however the ditch itself is much too substantial to have served solely as a garden plot boundary. In terms of drainage the relative levels collected during survey of the site suggests that the ditch fell from the south-east street end to the north-west, suggesting it drained down slope, however again the feature is much too substantial to serve solely as a drainage channel. The fills of the ditch are suggestive of periods of natural silting perhaps as a result of particularly wet weather followed by periods of stagnation during which time peaty material formed, this also suggests that the feature, once constructed, was rarely if ever cleaned out.

It must therefore be considered to have functioned as a large boundary ditch although what exactly it forms the boundary to will remain unclear unless more of the feature is discovered during future development along Irish Street.

While the southern portion of the ditch remains sealed by modern overburden, the southern terminal has shown that it was deliberately back-filled with a grey clay and crushed red brick, perhaps as a means of consolidating the relatively soft ground surface that its silting fills formed so as to allow the most recent buildings to be constructed at the site.

The small ditch which was discovered to cut through the western edge of the larger ditch contained pottery finds dating from the 18th right through to the 20th centuries and likely represents the remains of the plot boundary or a relic garden boundary with the later finds being intrusive and relating to modern construction at the site.