County: Limerick Site name: LIMERICK: 'St John's Hospital', Irishtown, and 'King's Island', Englishtown
Sites and Monuments Record No.: N/A Licence number: —
Author: Celie O Rahilly, c/o Planning Dept, Limerick Corporation
Site type: Historic town
Period/Dating: Multi-period
ITM: E 557354m, N 657614m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 52.668020, -8.630498
A limited amount of work was carried out in the city over the past year. This was mostly the monitoring of ongoing developments. However, a licence was obtained for the carpark at St John's Hospital, where works involved trenches for service pipes. The site is located to the north of the Hospital within the city walls and on high ground and it was hoped that some archaeological deposits would have survived. Most of the service trenches were at a high level and only late infill was noted. A single trench located against the northern perimeter wall was dug to a low level. This contained, at a depth of 7.6m OD, an orange clay with charcoal which is of probable archaeological potential. A similar layer was recorded on other sites in the Irishtown. Above this was 1m of light brown soil, possibly the 'garden soil' noted on other excavated sites where this layer overlay the 13th/early 14th-century deposits and underlay the early 17th-century activity. This in turn was covered by c. 1.7m of late non-archaeological infill.
Five trial cuts were carried out under a general licence for the King's Island/Englishtown in the grounds of the Convent of Mercy near the Dominican Priory of St Saviour. Two of these were located to the west near Old Dominick Street. These yielded a considerable depth of rubble which, owing to its unstable nature, could not be bottomed out. There were possibly cellars along here. In the 3 cuttings opened towards the east near the City Wall, deposits of archaeological potential were noted. These were up to 2m below the present ground levels.
Finally it should be recorded that walls of a late medieval house, located on the west side of Nicholas St, (N.G.R. R578576), and which are mentioned in the Urban Survey (House B, p. 263), were partly demolished under the Dangerous Building Act. No notice was given so it was not possible to record any features to the fronts of these walls. Demolition was stopped before they were totally razed and the round-headed doorway in the north wall remains.
