County: Louth Site name: Townparks, Ardee
Sites and Monuments Record No.: N/A Licence number: 17E0565
Author: Jon Stirland, Archaeological Consultancy Services Unit
Site type: Non-archaeological
Period/Dating: —
ITM: E 695610m, N 790682m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 53.856785, -6.546666
An archaeological assessment (test trenching) was carried out on a proposed development site located on Jervis Street, Adree, Co. Louth. The site is currently under pasture and was originally parkland associated with Ardee House, a large country house built in 1760-1800, and its associated estate grounds. The proposed works occur approximately 300m west of the historic town of Ardee (LH017-101). An Archaeological and Architectural Heritage Desk Based-Assessment was carried out for this site in March 2015 by Archer Heritage Planning Ltd (Aidan O’Connell).
The current assessment was carried out at the request of Louth County Council, who requested that the archaeological assessment include a geophysical survey and test trenching of the site. The geophysical survey took place on 3-4 January 2018 under licence 17R0230.
The survey indicated that the site contains numerous magnetic anomalies that may be indicative of agricultural activity, such as iron objects located within the plough soil. Three areas of large isolated anomalies where noted that may represent possible archaeological features, but may also represent areas of burning or large ferrous anomalies. A linear response aligned north-west to south-east traversing the centre of the site was also identified representing the line/route of a track/aneway, which is clearly depicted on the Ordnance Survey Cassini 6-inch MAP. Test trenching was carried out on 18-19 January 2018.
There were restrictions over a large area of the site where no test trenches were permitted due to the location of services (ESB, Bord Gáis and a foul sewer). The test trenches were aligned to detect anomalies found during the geophysical survey and assess their archaeological potential.
A total of seventeen test trenches were excavated. No archaeological features or deposits were recorded. A number of sherds of medieval pottery were recovered from the topsoil or from agricultural features. Given the proximity (c. 80m) to the tower-house (LH017-009) and historic town of Ardee (LH017-101), c. 200m, this is not surprising. The test area lay within two fields in pasture divided by an east west running stream.
Jon Stirland, Unit 21 Boyne Business Park, Greenhills, Drogheda, Co Louth.
