1989:048 - GALWAY: Merchants Road II, Townparks, Galway

The excavation at Merchants Road II, Galway, was organised by Mr Marcus Casey and funded by M.J. Conry and Son, the owners of the site. The site, which was covered with 19th-century derelict buildings, was due for redevelopment with office block accommodation. Four weeks were available for the excavation, which took place between 24 August and 18 September 1989.

The main archaeological features located during the excavation were a 29m section of the medieval city wall and the base of a semicircular tower, known as Michael's Tower. The city wall was built of roughly coursed limestone and rhyolite masonry, with a solid core of rubble and mortar. The wall sloped from a maximum height of 2m at the western end of the site to a height of 1.3m at the eastern end, and it had an average width of 1.8m. A culvert opening was located just east of Michael's Tower but this was completely broken internally and filled with modern rubble, similar to that overlying the rest of the site. The 14m section of the city wall east of the tower had been disturbed in a number of places. Two sections of the outer face of the wall had been destroyed by later wall foundations and a circular brick-lined wall had been dug into the core of the wall at the eastern end of the site. The material outside the city wall consisted entirely of a rubble fill, deposited as a result of land reclamation here in the 18th and 19th centuries.

The excavation area inside the city wall was very confined. However, some stratified medieval layers were located and a trench here produced 43 sherds of Saintonge pottery as well as some locally-made earthenwares. The pottery finds would appear to be contemporary with the earliest phases of activity associated with the construction of the town's fortifications in the late 13th/early 14th century. The contexts may be part of an infill to raise the ground level after the wall had been built. The building of the wall probably commenced shortly after the year 1270, when Galway obtained its first murage grant.

The semicircular tower was built of randomly coursed limestone masonry with a solid rubble and mortar core. It rested on a substantial plinth of large limestone boulders which were securely mortared to the base of the tower. The foundations below the plinth consisted of loosely packed limestone boulders with smaller packing stones in between. The tower has an average height of 1.8m and an average width of 1.5m, The stonework of the Outer face of the tower was almost totally concealed behind a mortar facing. The inner face was composed of randomly coursed limestone masonry. The tower was mortared to the outer face of the city wall, the joining on the western side having been partially destroyed by a modern wall foundation. The fill within the tower had also been disturbed by later wall foundations. Five sherds of medieval earthenware pottery and some animal bone were recovered from this fill. The fill included a lot of compact dauby clay, which was probably used to help keep the structure watertight. The most interesting find from the area outside the tower was the upper portion of a horse's skull. Michael's Tower is one of the several flanking towers which were placed at strategic points around the city wall. It is clearly shown on the numerous late medieval maps of the city dating from the late 16th century onward. There is no documentary evidence as to the date of its construction, but it may be an original feature of the town's fortifications.

38 Lower Newcastle, Galway