County: Dublin Site name: DUBLIN: 1 Palace St./4 Exchange Court
Sites and Monuments Record No.: N/A Licence number: 94E0064
Author: D.L. Swan, Arch-Tech Ltd.
Site type: Historic town
Period/Dating: Multi-period
ITM: E 715443m, N 734020m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 53.343800, -6.266304
This site is located just outside and to the north of the Lower Castle Yard of Dublin Castle. It occupies all of the area between the Palace St. frontage to the east, and the west wall of No 4 Exchange Court, directly to the east of City Hall, from which it is separated by a distance of between 0.4m and 0.7m. The eastern Poddle culvert extends directly to the east along the outer face of the Palace St. frontage, while the western stream, similarly culverted, flows underneath the open area between the basement and the surviving structures.
The agreed programme of testing necessitated the cutting of three trial trenches. Two of these were located in the area of the proposed basements adjacent to No 2 Palace St. The third tested the area under the western boundary wall of the building facing onto Exchange Court. Since this wall is almost contiguous to the east wall of City Hall, it was considered possible that the eastern range of the medieval town wall might extend into the site in this area.
Trenches 1 and 2 were cut to a depth of 4.6m below ground level, which at this point is established as between 5.87m and 5.93m OD. Thus the base of the cuttings lay at a depth of 1.28-1.3m OD. No significant archaeological deposits were encountered.
In the surviving building to the west of the site, a large basement or cellar completely brick-built was revealed, the floor of which was at a level of 3.48m to 3.55m OD. A test trench was cut into the deposits below this floor to a depth of 1.2m, or a total of approximately 4m below ground level. There can be little doubt but that the lower, stone-built courses here belong to an earlier wall which was re-used as a foundation for the west wall of the later basement or cellar. This stone wall revealed beneath the brick cellar wall, while not displaying the characteristic battering of the medieval town wall, is undoubtedly the earliest feature revealed. Development works were planned so as to avoid any possibility of damage to the masonry.
Finds and artefacts consisted mainly of quantities of pottery of 16th-century date or later, together with fragments of clay pipes, domestic waste, bone and shell.
32 Fitzwilliam Place, Dublin 2
