EHG223 - Watching brief - Falcon Square, Inverness

A watching brief was due to be undertaken at Falcon Square, Inverness, by AOC (Scotland) Ltd during and following the demolition of derelict buildings on the site and prior to is use as a temporary car park. Three site visits were carried out in October 1997. The buildings had previously been subject to a recording exercise (see EHG185). On the day of the first site visit the buildings had already been demolished and wall lines on the north and south had been removed by hand and replaced with concrete foundations. It was noted by the site agent that in the north-east corner of the site during the demolition he had seen brick furnaces and a black ashy material, presumably from the site's former use in the C19 as a foundry. Other works, such as the lifting of granite setts were not observed archaeologically although it was also noted by the site agent that when the setts were lifted they were bedded on a black ashy silt, interpreted as deriving from or contaminated by, material from the foundry. In general the very limited quantity of ground breaking work undertaken at the time meant that very little of archaeological interest was observed. <1>