2024:336 - Albert Street and Western Park, Clonmel, Tipperary

Archaeological monitoring took place of the rehabilitation of 319m of 100mm Cast-Iron (CI) and 395m of 75mm Cast Iron (CI) Watermain with 790m of a new 125mm HDPE watermain. Works include decommissioning of 258m of unsurveyed watermain and transfer the 22 existing BYS to the new watermain in Western Park and Albert Street, Clonmel, Co. Tipperary as an Uisce Éireann project.

It involved an open-cut or box trench excavation for the most part. This entailed mechanical excavation to depths of 0.9m to 1.2m for the most part in a 0.5m-wide trench. Larger areas were excavated such as the northern section of Connelly Park, in which a 2.4m by 1.1m hole was excavated to a depth of 0.8m. In general, connections into properties adjacent to the scheme involved excavation of holes up to 1.3m by 1m and up to 1.1m in depth.

Both the western section of Albert Street and Western Park were not monitored as these were situated outside the Zone of Notification for archaeological sites. Connelly Park, the eastern half of Albert Street and Gravel Walk were archaeologically monitored as they are either within Zones of Notification or skirted the edge of them and were therefore deemed within sufficient proximity to involve monitoring.

For the most part, the stratigraphy of the ground works consisted of 1m to 0.2m tarmac or concrete surface; onto 0.2m stone chip bedding. From here it varied to being either river gravels utility services sand, round chip fill or lemix; onto orange silty sand or silty clay as the natural underlying subsoil. On occasion the natural subsoil was found to rise to directly beneath he street surface material and bedding layer. The line of the works frequently ran in tandem with existing utilities but was more frequently truncated by existing services.

No materials, structures or deposits of an archaeological or artefactual nature were encountered during monitoring. Modern to 19th-century red brick fragments, glass and painted timber pieces were encountered and these were observed within the modern fills.