2016:167 - St James' Hospital, James Street, Dublin 8, Dublin

Monitoring of groundworks at three small developments on the campus of St James' Hospital, James Street, Dublin 8, was carried out between 2 March and 27 May 2016. The projects consisted of:

a) an extension to the existing Central Pathology Laboratory (CPL), a modern building located in the north-eastern corner of the hospital campus;

b) a single-storey extension to the southern side of the Cardiac Unit, a modern building located near the south-western corner of the campus; and

c) a single-storey extension to the western side of the Cardiac Unit.

The monitoring of groundworks was a condition of planning permission. A number of recorded monuments were located in the vicinity of the CPL: a hospital (DU018-020304), a workhouse (DU018-020305), a watercourse (DU018-043001) and the historic town of Dublin (DU018-020). There were no recorded monuments in the vicinity of the Cardiac Unit. Recent excavations in the vicinity included the test excavation and subsequent monitoring of a new mortuary and semi-basement car park, undertaken in June 2001 by Claire Walsh (Licence 01E0137), adjacent to the CPL building, which uncovered a post-medieval deposit of cultivation soil and rubble up to 1.2m deep. Pre-development testing of the Cardiac Unit by Roseanne Meenan in 1998 (Licence 98E0560) revealed nothing of archaeological significance. At all three development sites the monitoring of groundworks revealed areas which had been completely disturbed and backfilled and which contained numerous modern services associated with the adjacent modern buildings. There was no evidence of pre-20th-century activity. Only modern artefacts were recovered. Nothing of archaeological significance was uncovered during the monitoring.