County: Louth Site name: Townparks (Ardee By.)
Sites and Monuments Record No.: N/A Licence number: 19E0408
Author: Steve Hickey and Ed Danaher
Site type: Post-medieval agricultural features
Period/Dating: —
ITM: E 695720m, N 790940m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 53.859083, -6.544914
Test trenching was carried out at a proposed development site located at Golf Links Road, Ardee, Co. Louth, in the townland of Townparks in September 2019.
A total of 31 test trenches (with an aggregate length of 934 linear metres) were excavated across the c.2.5 hectare site. A geophysical survey (Leigh 2019, 19R0082) of the area preceded the archaeological test trenching and had identified a number of anomalies, trends and two potential areas of burning. Utilising the geophysical survey results, the testing programme was able to extensively cover the site as well as target the notable potential archaeological anomalies.
The test trenches provided a general understanding of the varying depths of natural subsoils, extant deposits and previous field boundaries, and revealed evidence consistent with eighteenth-/nineteenth-century agricultural burning on site. As such, only post-medieval agricultural features of a slight archaeological significance were uncovered. Nonetheless, given the proximity of the proposed development to the Zone of Archaeological Potential for Ardee Historic Town (LH017-101), and the scale of the proposed development, there remains a potential to find previously unknown archaeological deposits or features within the proposed development site.
Unit 1 Hector Street Mills, Kilrush, Co. Clare
