County: Meath Site name: Pitcher Lane, Kells (Archdeaconry Glebe td.)
Sites and Monuments Record No.: N/A Licence number: 17E0661
Author: Rosanne Meenan
Site type: Urban
Period/Dating: —
ITM: E 674001m, N 776123m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 53.735280, -6.876667
Planning permission was granted for construction of six two-storey duplex dwellings over ground floor apartments, built in a terrace, with parking to the front and a garden to the rear. The site is located on the south side of Pitcher Lane which runs eastwards off Carrick Street, Kells. It has been suggested that the town wall may have run across a portion of this site (Simms and Simms 1990).
Six trenches tested the site to investigate the evidence for survival of the town wall here and also the possible survival of evidence for burgage plots.
The overburden throughout comprised garden soil mixed with items of modern rubbish and a small amount of animal bone. Subsoil everywhere comprised gravel with stones of mixed sizes in a light-grey/yellow clay matrix.
A land drain comprising a trench filled with loose stone ran down the site north-east/south-west. There was also evidence for recent excavation of a test trench or pit, probably part of one of the test trenches excavated by David Sweetman in 2004 (Bennett 2007, 319).
Nothing of archaeological significance was exposed in the trenches. No objects of archaeological significance were recovered although there were many sherds of 19th- and 20th-century pottery.
References:
Bennett, I. 2007. Excavations 2004.
Simms, A. & Simms, K. 1990. Kells Irish Historic Towns Atlas No. 4.
Roestown, Drumree, Co. Meath
