What is recorded here

Half a metre beneath the modern road, a forgotten cobbled street still holds the shape of earlier footsteps. Red clay and buried pottery mark the lives that moved through this place before the town changed. The old road does not disappear; it waits under the new one, patient and complete.

Located on level ground on the S bank of the River Boyne along the course of Market Street. Archaeological monitoring (96E0175) of a pipe trench identified a cobbled surface of an earlier street 1-1.1m below the then street level. It had an irregular surface and was covered with a red/brown clay (T 0.5-0.7m) with stones that contained some animal bone and post-medieval pottery. At the E end of Market Street the cobbles overlay a deposit (max. D 0.4m) with black organic material and medieval ceramics with lenses of sand, suggesting it was all water-deposited. In places there were two levels of cobbles and towards the SW end of the street the organic layer lay over the lower cobbles which were set in boulder clay. At the W end of Market Street a N-S wall and an ENE-WSW wall, whose conjunction could not be examined, cut through all the deposits. A N-S ditch (Wth of top 1.9m) with silt at the base was identified at the W end of Market Street. It was cut into the boulder clay but from what level was not ascertained. (Meenan 1996, 4-6) Compiled by: Michael Moore Date of upload: 8 July 2019

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