2003:2251 - TUAM: Shop Street and Bishop Street, Galway

A joint development of shops, offices and car-parking areas required the demolition of standing walls. A high, 0.42m-wide wall which separated the two properties was knocked down; no part of its fabric contained any medieval architecture or features of note. The demolition of a derelict three-storey 19thcentury building with a late 19th-century plastered façade on the east side of Shop Street was monitored, while prior to demolition the removal of plaster revealed no significant stonework. Six test-trenches were cut across its area. Most of the trenches were very shallow, averaging 0.3m deep above the yellow daub floor. However, Trench 7 (along the west) and Trench 12 (along the south) contained pockets of redeposited black organic clay. Three oyster shells came from this context within Trench 7, but there were no other finds.

At the rear of the property on Bishop Street six further trenches were excavated, laid out to avoid a deep stone-lined well discovered in the yard some 30 years earlier. This well is to be incorporated into the proposed development.

Trench 1 was 20m long east-north-east/westsouth- west and was located on the south side of the wall which separated both properties. The upper layer consisted of a recent stony-gravel mix with some red brick. Throughout this trench the boulder clay was formed of a light-brown gravel and this showed a noticeable downward slope of 1m from the east to the west end. Between the boulder clay and the upper layer, in all but the east part of the trench, there was a very organic black clay 0.3–0.85m deep. The deepening of this clay near the west end showed an attempt at levelling off the ground. It was found that the overhead wall continued below ground level for some 1.8m. There was little, if any, variation between the newly uncovered wall face at the base and that which stood above ground. It did, however, contain a narrow ledge 0.1m wide and 0.4m above the base of the wall in practically all sectors. It appeared that this might have incorporated part of a foundation plinth, though there was definitely no batter in evidence. The black organic clay extended beneath the base of the wall for two-thirds of its western length and by as much as 0.4m at the extreme west end. There were no finds or artefacts from this trench.

Trench 2 measured 19m long north-northwest/ south-south-east and was close to the stonelined well. There was a good depth of stratigraphy from the material in this trench. Its primary context was the rich black organic clay, which varied from 1.4m thick at the south-south-east end to 2.4m thick at most; it contained a small amount of oyster shells, wooden twigs, one fragment of leather and animal bone and teeth. Cattle dominated the assemblage here, with sheep/goat also present, and all appeared to be the result of secondary butchering. The retrieval of a sawn-off cattle tibia may suggest that bone artefacts had been produced. Most of the cattle bone recovered came from the head and lower extremities and this could possibly point towards leather production, as the skins usually came with the heads and lower extremities still attached.

Trench 3 was aligned north-north-west/southsouth- east for 14m and uncovered the eastern face of a similarly aligned wall, 0.55m thick and of similar construction to the lower courses of the wall in Trench 1. It was built of roughly dressed or undressed stone, all laid down in a roughly coursed fashion. This wall also had a narrow 0.1m-wide ledge at 0.4m above the base, but there was no apparent tie-in between this wall and the wall in Trench 1. The wall ran for some 7m in length and was straight, apart from a slight splay of 0.08m for 1m at the south end. The black organic clay was also found in this trench and underlay the wall for a few metres along the south end. This context was also to be found in Trenches 4–6.

Trench 6 was cut along the east side of a high wall which separated the two holdings. This wall was found to continue into the depth of the trench and its construction was somewhat similar to that in Trenches 1 and 3, if not quite as well built. The black organic clay varied from 0.8 to 1.1m thick here and could be seen beneath the wall foundations in practically all sectors. Apart from animal bone, nothing else was retrieved from this context.