County: Antrim Site name: Docker’s Club, 57 Pilot Street, Sailortown, Belfast
Sites and Monuments Record No.: N/A Licence number: AE/15/109
Author: Ruairí Ó Baoill, Paul Logue and Liz Thomas
Site type: 19th- and 20th-century domestic houses/urban
Period/Dating: —
ITM: E 334437m, N 375244m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 54.607658, -5.919884
As part of Dr Liz Thomas’ British Academy Post-doctoral Fellowship (BAPDF) ‘Sailortown Project’, a community-inclusive research excavation was carried out by the Centre for Archaeological Fieldwork, School of Natural and Built Environment, Queen’s University Belfast, at the Dockers’ Club, Pilot Street, Belfast between 25 May and 5 June 2015. This excavation focused on exploring household archaeology and household structures in a maritime environment. The excavation took place in the yard of The Dockers’ Club, Pilot Street, and was formerly the site of a terrace of four domestic houses dating from the 19th century. A 16m square single trench was opened in the south-east corner of the site to expose the walls and floor surfaces within one house. Nearly 600 artefacts, dating from the 19th and 20th centuries, were unearthed. These included fragments of ceramics, glass, metalwork and slate.
This excavation was funded by the British Academy/Leverhulme Small Research Grants Award and the Heritage Lottery ‘Sharing Heritage’ grant (The Queen’s University of Belfast in partnership with the Sailortown Regeneration Group). The Queen’s University of Belfast, the Northern Ireland Environment Agency (now the Historic Environment Division, Department for Communities), Sailortown Regeneration Group, Shared History Interpretative Project, The Dockers’ Club and Belfast Harbour also provided support in kind towards the excavation.
Reference
Thomas, L. 2014: ‘Down at the Docks. Excavations in Sailortown’, Archaeology Ireland Vol. 28, No. 4, Issue No. 110 (Winter 2014), 31-33.
Centre for Archaeological Fieldwork, School of Natural and Built Environment, Queen's University Belfast BT7 1NN
