2015:089 - Beaufort College, Navan, Meath

An impact assessment and test trenching took place at the site of a proposed new extension to Beaufort College located within the townland of Limekilnhill, Navan, County Meath at a pre-planning stage.
The landscape around Navan and the townlands located alongside the River Boyne in particular have proven to be rich in archaeological features and deposits.
One of the major landowners in the medieval period within County Meath were the monastic houses. Cartographical and historical sources indicate that the Abbey of St Mary at Navan, established between 1174-84, held large areas of land within the county. Today townland names such as Abbeyland and Abbeyland South serve as indicators of the abbey's land holdings.
Beaufort College is located within the townland of Limekilnhill. However the Down Survey map of 1656 depicts the site of the college being located upon lands associated with the Abbey. This association appears to continue until the twentieth century with the site clearly marked as ‘Abbeyland’ on the first edition (1836) OS map and on the 1910 twenty five inch edition where the map still clearly depicts a large sub-circular field boundary labeled “Abbey Lands”. This same sub-circular field boundary is also depicted on the Down Survey map of 1656, suggesting that this field boundary was present within the landscape before 1656.
This sub-circular field boundary was truncated by the development of the Dublin to Navan railway line in the late 1800s. The site is now occupied by a greyhound racing track developed in the 1950s and Beaufort College which was developed during the 1980s directly upon the line of this sub-circular field boundary.
On 2 March 2015 a single test trench was excavated across the line of the sub-circular field boundary. The excavation concluded that the boundary was not of an archaeological nature and was merely an agricultural field boundary comprised of a hedgerow and very shallow ditch less than 0.15m in depth that contained sherds of modern pottery and modern domestic waste material. The trench also indicated that during the construction of the college and its associated ground works, the site underwent major landscaping and ground reduction within the area of the current car park and the feature is too shallow to have survived in this area.
Due to the reduced ground level of the car park within the location of the proposed extension and the fact that the field boundary was found to be of no archaeological significance, no further archaeological investigation is considered necessary.

Archaeological Consultancy Services Unit, Unit 21 Boyne Business Park, Greenhills, Drogheda, Co Louth