County: Louth Site name: Culfore, Mountpleasant, Dundalk
Sites and Monuments Record No.: N/A Licence number: 19E0108
Author: Linda Clarke, Archaeological Consultancy Services Unit
Site type: No archaeology found
Period/Dating: —
ITM: E 707440m, N 810978m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 54.036779, -6.359780
An archaeological assessment in the form of test trenching was carried out on 1 March 2019 at a proposed development at Culfore, Mountpleasant, Dundalk, Co. Louth. The site is located north-west of enclosure LH004-073. A total of six test trenches were excavated. A geophysical survey of the site was also carried out by Donald Murphy in February 2019 under license number 19R0039.
The sod and topsoil (C01) measured an average of 0.32m in thickness and lay above the natural orange sandy clay (C02). The geophysical survey identified a number of curvilinear features in the north-east portion of the site, which were tested by Trenches 1 and 4. The curvilinear features seemed to correspond to a change in the natural, from an orange sandy clay (C02) to a mid-brown sandy clay and stone (C03), which clearly followed the line of a tree belt illustrated on the 25-inch Ordnance Survey (OS) sheet of 1907–9. The tree belt is not shown on the first edition 6-inch OS map of 1835, so it must represent mid-19th-century land improvements at the north-eastern boundary of Mountpleasant House.
No archaeological features or deposits were exposed or identified and no finds were recovered. It is recommended that the proposed development be allowed to proceed without any further archaeological requirements.
Unit 21 Boyne Business Park, Greenhills, Drogheda, Co Louth
