2020:191 - Former workhouse, Fearann Uí Fhlaitheartaigh/Farranflaherty, Dingle, Kerry

Testing was undertaken within the limits of the campus of the former Dingle Union Workhouse, and later District Hospital, in early November 2020. A series of ten test trenches (T1-T10) with a total meterage of c.266m were opened primarily with a back-acting 13-tonne track machine using a 1.8m-wide flat grading bucket. However, the L-shaped test trench T10, situated within the south-east limits of the existing front garden, required opening with a 3-tonne mini-digger with 1.3m-wide flat bucket.

In an industrial archaeological context, significant historical architectural structures (Features 1-3) were recorded in T1 & T10.

Feature 1 was discovered at the north-east limits of the workhouse complex abutting the extant high boundary wall. It was recorded in the northernmost limits of T1 and comprised of the basal courses of a 0.6m-wide wall forming a coherent small rectangular structure integrated into the north-eastern corner of the original boundary wall. The revealed basal courses of the structure are constructed with rubble sandstone bonded with a light-coloured gritty lime mortar. Cleaning revealed two side-by-side rectangular apertures at the base of and extending under the north boundary wall. The structure recorded in T1 was interpreted as the basal remains of a rectangular privy.

Features 2 and 3 were discovered in T10 in the southern limits of the current front garden. Excavation here revealed coherent sections of the original Front Entrance building to the workhouse (Feature 2). Feature 2 comprises of: (1) the basal courses of the north-east corner of a substantial building with the remnants of a possible later brick fireplace situated beside a large deposit of mortar; (2) an east-west orientated section of a wall with an abutting small cobbled area and (3) a short section of north-north-east/south-south-west orientated wall.
Feature 3 comprised of a rough cobbled area and kerbed cobbled drain. The exposed cobbling area measured 1.7m x 1.3m and the drain extends east-west abutting the cobbled area from the north. The revealed section of the 0.65m-wide cobbled drain extends for 2m before disappearing under both baulks. The cobbled drain is constructed with well-matched locally-derived rolled beach cobbles tightly set in a somewhat concave or dish-shaped profile. It is currently interpreted as having been in a corner area of the original front building complex.

Nothing of potential archaeological or wider cultural interest was noted in trenches T3, T4, T7, T8 and T9. Over 1300 finds were recovered from the testing and sieving. Finds include a large number of modern ceramic sherds, glass fragments and bottles, clay pipe fragments, metal objects and animal bones. Interim evaluation indicates that all finds appear to date from the latter half of the 19th – or early 20th century, conterminous with the life cycle of workhouse and to a lesser extent the hospital.

3 Lios Na Lohart, Ballyvelly, Tralee, Co. Kerry