County: Kilkenny Site name: KILKENNY: 21 Abbey St.
Sites and Monuments Record No.: N/A Licence number: 95E0016
Author: Claire Walsh
Site type: Historic town
Period/Dating: Multi-period
ITM: E 650139m, N 656243m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 52.655062, -7.258929
Trial-trenching was carried out on this development site on 10 January 1995. The site is located just outside the town wall of Kilkenny, thought to have been constructed in the early 13th century, and to the east of the medieval Dominican (Black) Abbey. The site of a possible medieval well, the Angel's Well, lies in the adjacent property.
Three machine trenches were opened. Deposits filling the town ditch were uncovered in two trenches. The ditch extends for 12m into the southern part of the development site. These deposits survived for a maximum depth of 0.8m, and were sealed beneath c. 1m of modern overburden. The ditch fill is a compacted grey silt with twigs, marine shell, few butchered animal bones and mortar flecks throughout. A single find, a fragment of green-glazed, undecorated floor-tile, which could date from the 13th to the 15th century, was recovered from the ditch fill.
Elsewhere on the site, a fairly homogeneous garden soil deposit overlay subsoil to a depth of 1.5m. Fragments of 18th-century pottery were retrieved from close to the base of the garden soil deposit.
15 St Brigid's Road Upper, Drumcondra, Dublin 9
