2016:437 - 7 Main Street, Lucan, Dublin

Monitoring of ground works took place at a development at 7 Main Street, Lucan, Co. Dublin as required by Section 6 of the granted planning permission (Planning Ref: SD15A/0275). The new development proposes a change of use of the building from an office to a health centre. This will entail the demolition of two phases of extension at the back of the building in order to build a new extension on the footprint of the earlier ones. The internal area of No. 7, which abutts the Main Street and the façade of which is being kept, is also being redeveloped.

The site is located in the heart of Lucan village, which is a medieval manorial borough (DU017-019) with references that date back to 1315. It is located immediately east of a semi-circular graveyard (DU017-019003), which has memorials dating largely from the 19th century. Inside the graveyard are the ruins of St Mary’s Church (DU017-019002), which was granted to the Augustinian Priory of St Catherine, west of Lucan, in 1219. The church is of nave and chancel type with a residential tower attached to the north side (DU017-019001-). The graveyard also marks the eastern boundary of Lucan Demesne.

The earliest cartographic source of Lucan that shows the development of the site is Rocque’s map of 1760. Houses are clearly visible along the western side of the Main Street which are not terraced and also not of uniform shape and size, making it unclear as to whether the building in question is represented. A row of terraced houses including No. 7 Main Street can be clearly seen, however, on both Taylor’s Map of Dublin (1816) and the 1st Edition OS map, it is represented as being considerably smaller than its present form in terms of depth. Due to the uniform nature in size and design of the row of terraced houses now visible on the Main Street (of which No. 7 forms the northern terminus) it is likely the houses visible on Rocque’s map of 1760 were knocked to build the surviving terrace somewhere between 1760 and 1816.

Monitoring of groundworks took place over three days in August 2016, with one further day in October. This involved the removal of a thick (0.35m) concrete slab floor (contemporary with a 1980s extension), which extended over the ground floor of the internal area of No. 7 in its entirety and both the late 19th- and 20th-century extensions (in total an area measuring 19.5m by 10m). As the new development was to be built on the footprint of the original building (as visible on Taylor’s Map of 1816) and the later extensions, this slab floor defined the area under which archaeological material could be uncovered. Once the concrete floor was removed a layer of ready-mix stone, contemporary with the floor and 0.2m in depth, was visible. Directly below this a layer of hard orange stony subsoil was visible under the area formerly inhabited by both the late 19th- and 20th-century extensions. There were no visible cuttings in the subsoil.

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