2015:228 - South Green and Harbour Road, Arklow, Wicklow

Monitoring was undertaken at South Green and Harbour Road, Arklow, Co. Wicklow in advance the wider Arklow Town Main Drainage Scheme.
Ground works associated with the installation of watermain, storm sewer and combined sewer pipes were monitored intermittently, under Part VIII planning, between July and December 2015.
The stratigraphy encountered across the majority of the project area comprised modern road surfaces and road formation overlying reclamation deposits and contaminated sands, which in turn overlay estuarine deposits of sand. This stratigraphy tallies well with what is known from the historic mapping, which depicts the area as a tidal estuary until the later 19th century when the area was reclaimed and used for a variety of industrial purposes.

The major exception to this general stratigraphy occurred c. 10m north of the junction between South Green and Tinahask. In this area, an organic mid-brown peaty marl was encountered at a depth of 1.8m below present ground level. This deposit, which contained an abundance of preserved reed stems, is thought to represent the former edge of the estuary which appears to have been a marshy area of shallow, brackish standing water. A fingernail-sized crumb of Leinster cooking ware was retrieved from this deposit. The preservative qualities of this deposit, its suspected location at the edge of the estuary and the retrieval of a small fragment of medieval pottery increases the archaeological potential of this area.

The fragment of ceramic may have been washed into the estuary from a settlement further upslope, towards Old Chapel Grounds, at a time when the estuary extended this far. The presence of such a small fragment, however, cannot be considered conclusive for dating purposes.

IAC Ltd, Unit G1, Network Enterprise Park, Kilcoole, Co. Wicklow