Excavation - miscellaneous

The National Monuments Service's description

Archaeological testing (03E134) by A. Hayden (2004) on a development site (dims 90m N-S; 35m E-W) on the NE side Canon Row outside Trim gate during 2003 recorded evidence of medieval furrows and ditches (excavations.ie 2003: 1426) which were further excavated during the following year by the same archaeologist under the same licence (excavations.ie 2004:1297). Occupation is known to have spread along the E side of Canon Row by 1641 as the Civil Survey (1654-6) notes ‘fourteene tenents with theire gardens & all ye Tenemets & gardens on the North side of Cannon-row Street with out west gate’ (Simington 1940, 222-3). A gravel ridge occupied much of the site but deposits survived in pockets at the extreme NE (D 1m) and the centre.

At the NE some early gullies with thirteenth to fourteenth century pottery were cut by a large N-S ditch (Wth 2.5m; D 0.8m) that had a slighter (Wth 0.9m; D 0.15m) one c. 2m to the W and both debouched into an E-W ditch (Wth 1.5m; D 0.35m) but the conjunction of the larger N-S drain with this was destroyed by a later pit (dims 4m x 3.5m) which was stone-lined on its S side. The pit was filled mostly with redeposited subsoil but 16 sherds of pottery dating from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century were recovered from it. The area between the N-S drains had N-S furrows that respected the W drain but cut the fills of the larger E one. The drains had silt fills with medieval pottery and may have served as boundaries for properties fronting onto Canon Row, but no trace of an earthen bank survives between them.

At the E edge of the central area two parallel gullies placed 1.5m apart may have provided drainage on either side of an earthen bank. These, together with a few post-holes were covered with a thin layer of medieval cultivation soil. At the W edge were a number of intercutting pits with fills of silt beneath cultivation clays, all producing thirteenth to fifteenth century ceramics, and a human pelvis was in the top fill of one pit. In the central area was a circular stone-lined pit (int. diam. c. 2.4m; D 1m plus) with the stone-lining extending as a mortar-stained platform (Wth 1.5m) around the mouth. The pit had loamy soils with medieval pottery. Post-medieval stone-lined N-S drains and E-W gullies cut all the features. Seventy of the 214 pottery sherds were post-medieval, including one each of tin-glazed earthenware and North Devon gravel-tempered wares, 9 sherds of black and brown wares and 5 of stoneware. The rest were locally made eighteenth to nineteenth century earthenwares. There were also clay pipe fragments including a bowl with a ‘crowned L’ motif and pieces of clay-walled furnaces with slag. The area remains undeveloped but material still remains in the central area. (Hayden 2004)

See the attached plans from Hayden (2004, figs 3, 9) _01 boundaries at NE; _02 stone-lined pit;

Compiled by: Michael Moore

Date of upload: 30 March 2023

Hayden, A. 2004 Archaeological Excavation of part of a Proposed Development Site at Canon Row/Kennedy Road, Navan, Co. Meath. Licence: 03E1314. Unpublished report, Alan Hayden Archaeological Projects
Simington, R. C. 1940 The Civil Survey AD 1654-1656. vol. V, County of Meath. Dublin, Stationery Office