2019:713 - Mullingar, Westmeath

Archaeological monitoring was carried out on behalf of Westmeath County Council in the zone of archaeological potential of the historic town of Mullingar (WM019-089). The work was carried out in association with street enhancement infrastructural works between October 2018 and September 2019.

The remains of the town’s early stone street or road surfaces, inclusive of cobbled drains, were exposed on multiple occasions, representing two main phases on Dominic Street, the more recent phase on Dominic Street and Dominic Square displaying evidence of repeated re-surfacing of the street in the 19th and 20th centuries. An earlier post-medieval phase was exposed from 0.68-1m below the present road level on Dominic Street. The remains of previous buildings and/or boundary walls, representing older street frontage or road side boundaries, were also uncovered, namely on the west side of Dominick Place, outside the Bank of Ireland, at No. 50 Oliver Plunkett Street and on Oliver Plunkett Street, at the corner with Martins Lane. Early service infrastructure comprising stone culverts were encountered on Blackhall Place and Pearse Street, with potential culvert remains at the north end of Church Avenue, and a potential brick chamber on Dominic Street at the junction with Dominick Place.

In late May 2019 human remains comprising both in situ articulated remains and disturbed disarticulated remains were identified during monitoring of infrastructural works on the roundabout at the junction of Dominick Place, Blackhall Street and Blackhall Place. The human remains were excavated to formation level from 10 to 13 June 2019.

The human remains uncovered to the north-east side of the roundabout at the junction of Dominick Place and Blackhall Street are an extension of burials previously recorded at this location, which was historically located within the precinct of the medieval Holy Trinity Dominican Priory (WM019-089004), and the roundabout may mark the north-west extent of a large burial ground associated with the Priory that was situated on Blackhall Street. The human remains belonged to both adults and juveniles, with two incomplete in situ juvenile burials excavated along with an incomplete and partially disturbed adult, the bone of the latter containing cut lesions from sharp force trauma and indicating a possible violent death. The remainder of the bone was fragmentary, indicating the area had been previously disturbed. All of the bone from the excavation at the 'Dominick Place Roundabout' represents a total MNI count of six individuals, comprising two adults, an older child or young adolescent, two individuals in middle childhood and one young child. This is consistent with the human remains exposed in 2003 to the immediate north, on the line of the Midland Region Broadband Project, during which an upper burial layer of disturbed and poorly preserved remains of primarily juvenile individuals were recorded (Delany 2003:1986).

A number of finds were recovered from the site; these were for the most part recovered during the monitoring phase and comprised a single clay pipe, and a small amount of pottery sherds and and glass. The assemblage dates from the later 17th to the early 20th century, with the bulk of the material dating to the 18th and 19th centuries, a single exception being a sherd of 13th century Dublin-type ware recovered in mixed deposits to the south side of Dominick Square.

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