County: Wexford Site name: WEXFORD: Bride Street
Sites and Monuments Record No.: N/A Licence number: —
Author: R. Meenan
Site type: Town defences
Period/Dating: Late Medieval (AD 1100-AD 1599)
ITM: E 704917m, N 621537m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 52.335405, -6.460471
A development of local authority housing was planned for an area including and outside part of the town wall at the junction of Bride St. and Clifford St. at the south end of the medieval walled town.
Three trenches were machine-excavated along the base of the exterior of the town wall. The bottom course was exposed about 2.5m below present street level. There was no plinth and the bottom of the wall was seen to sit on yellow boulder clay. Black loose fill with 19th-century pottery and redeposited boulder clay comprised the fill up against the wall. On the other side of the wall, at the east end, a crude batter was exposed which contained brick in its bottom course.
When the building foundations were being dug, a layer c.8cm thick was exposed 60cm below the present street level, in the edge of a cutting under the footpath at the south-west corner of the site. It was a soft, dark grey layer containing charcoal flecks and oyster shells with a concentrated lens in one place of broken cockle and mussel shells. A sherd of medieval cooking ware was found underneath this layer. However, any extension of this feature out into the rest of the site had been removed during previous building activity.
