2025:306 - Ben Crom Place, Kilkeel, Down

The development, on lands 60 m southeast of 18 Ben Crom Place, Kilkeel, Co. Down, consisted of the construction of four pairs of semi-detached dwellings, a total of eight dwellings, and associated services, hard and soft landscaping.

The application site lay within the grounds of the former Union Workhouse and was adjacent to one of its two graveyards; the recorded archaeological sites and monuments nearby were indicators of a high archaeological potential for further, previously unrecorded archaeological remains which might be encountered within the application site, particularly a possibly significant mound feature, recorded on the OS map of c. 1860 and was still extant on site.

Historic Environment Division: Historic Monuments (HED: HM) considered the impacts of the proposal and were content that the proposal satisfied PPS 6 policy requirements, subject to conditions for the agreement and implementation of a developer-funded programme of archaeological works. An agreed programme of works led to the issuing of an archaeological license, with site testing taking place on 18 and 19 June 2025.

Testing revealed that the mound was non-archaeological, consisting of a 3m high and c. 20m diameter pile of topsoil, with pottery recovered from its basal layers suggesting a late 19th-century date for its construction. The testing further revealed a large area of disturbance, a probable gravel extraction pit, in the north-east corner of the site, which had been backfilled with urban domestic refuse, again probably in the late 19th or early 20th centuries. Plough furrows across the site suggested that the general are was the subject of agricultural practices until the later half of the 20th century when it was made into a police compound and subsequently a temporary car park.