1990:061 - GALWAY: Merchants Road III, Townparks, Galway

The rescue excavation at Merchants Road III, Galway, took place from 11–22 December 1989. The site was being excavated in advance of development. There was no demolition work prior to the excavation.

The excavation was located inside a 19th-century warehouse, which fronted onto Merchants Road to the south. The building, measuring 17sq. m externally, originally contained four floors and had been divided in two by a north-south dividing wall. The medieval city wall had been incorporated into the north wall of the warehouse. It extended to the height of the second floor (5.2m) in the western part of the building and to the height of the first floor in the eastern part. The top of the wall formed a ledge, averaging 1.4m wide, inside the building. Most of the wall's facing stonework was covered with plaster and whitewash. There was a slight curved kink in the wall near the centre of the site. This section of the wall had been completely refaced. The only other feature of the wall was a blocked aperture (2.1m high by 2.4m wide) near the western end of the site.

A mechanical digger was employed to open a number of trenches throughout the excavation area. The natural soil was reached at a depth of 1.8m. No archaeological levels were located. The ground was composed of a series of mixed rubble fills. The finds were modern apart from one sherd of sgraffito pottery and two sherds of gravel-tempered ware.

The medieval wall had a plinth/outer skin just below the ground level. This feature terminated at a kink in the wall 3m from the eastern end of the site. A section of the wall face, c. 2m in length, had collapsed at this point. The wall was composed of randomly-coursed limestone masonry (aver, stone size 0.34m x 0.2m) and was built on the natural soil and bedrock.

Editor's note: Although excavated in 1989, the report on this site was not submitted in time for inclusion in the bulletin of that year.

38 Lower Newcastle, Galway