County: Clare Site name: ENNIS: Old Ground Hotel, O'Connell Street
Sites and Monuments Record No.: SMR 33:82 Licence number: 96E0352
Author: Mary Henry
Site type: Castle - tower house
Period/Dating: Late Medieval (AD 1100-AD 1599)
ITM: E 533664m, N 677439m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 52.843802, -8.984693
The Old Ground Hotel is located off O'Connell Street, in the heart of medieval Ennis. The grounds of the hotel were the focus of much activity in previous centuries. The remains of a fifteenth-century tower house are incorporated into the hotel. It is certain that a jail was built on the site in the latter years of the seventeenth century, but some historians believe that there was a jail on the site as early as 1592. In the nineteenth century the site of the old jail was occupied by a police barracks and stables, and by the town hall in the latter decades of the century.
The site of the proposed extension to the hotel covered an area measuring 11m by 8m. Three test-trenches were opened on the site, which had been disturbed in the post-medieval period, probably during the construction of the buildings to the rear of O'Connell Street. Further disturbance occurred in recent years with the construction of additions to the hotel and the laying of service pipes throughout the site.
Much of the upper levels of the site had been infilled in recent years with rubble, red brick, lumps of concrete and stone. The only levels of interest occurred between 1m and 1.5m below modern ground level. A dark grey deposit with inclusions of charcoal, small fragments of animal bone and sherds of pottery dating from the eighteenth to the early twentieth century occurred beneath the 1m level. The presence of finds dating from the eighteenth to the twentieth century indicates that the deposit was disturbed in recent times.
1 Jervis Place, Clonmel, Co. Tipperary
