County: Galway Site name: Kirwin
Sites and Monuments Record No.: N/A Licence number: 95E0134
Author: Frank Ryan, Clooncundra, Belcarra, Castlebar, Co. Mayo.
Site type: Medieval
Period/Dating: —
ITM: E 484916m, N 710085m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 53.128873, -9.719658
The site comprised two adjacent lots, Retail No. 1 and Retail No. 2. The former was a wholesale butcher's premises while the latter was divided into two garages. All walls were covered with cement dashing and, in the case of No. 1, tiles. The walls surrounding No. 2 were of stone construction, the plaster of which was removed from both sides of the walls in order to determine whether they were of medieval date. Assessment of the stone wall was carried out by another archaeologist.
Test-trenching was carried out on 12 and 13 July. Two trenches measuring 2m x 1m were dug by midi-digger, one at either side of the dividing wall.
Trench 1 revealed a cobbled floor made up of rolled stones at a depth of approx. 1m below the finished concrete floor. This was covered with a thin organic tarry layer. A subfloor of loose dry fill, which appears to have been inserted to raise the level of the floor and provide a bed for a more recent cobbled floor, was above the tarry layer.
The original cobbled floor was laid directly above a brown mottled clay layer which included large quantities of shell, bone and flecks of charcoal to a depth of 0.43m.
Below this the clay was of similar make-up but more grey and contained little evidence of shell. Two sherds of fine medieval pottery were recovered from this layer, which was 0.37m thick and lay directly on the natural stone.
The finished floor level in No. 1 was 0.5m above the level of the lane, while in No. 2 the level of the lane was the same as the finished floor.
Trench 2 confirmed the findings of Trench 1, containing a similar depth and make-up of archaeological layering. No cobbled floor was found in Retail No. 2, where the modern concrete floor was laid directly on top of a 0.23m-thick brown mottled clay layer, which contained shell, bone and charcoal similar to that found beneath the earlier cobbled layer of Retail No. 1. Below this, the clay contained large loose stones within the brown clay layer. A fine sherd of medieval pottery was also recovered from this layer, which was laid on top of the natural stone. The water-table rose to 0.3m above natural.
