County: Galway Site name: GALWAY: 12–21 Eyre Street
Sites and Monuments Record No.: N/A Licence number: 95E0176
Author: Linzi Simpson, c/o Margaret Gowen and Co. Ltd.
Site type: Town defences and Watercourse
Period/Dating: Post Medieval (AD 1600-AD 1750)
ITM: E 529850m, N 725513m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 53.275306, -9.051777
The development site lies directly outside the medieval mural defences of Galway, on the north-eastern side. The town defences were strengthened considerably during the Confederate wars (between 1643 and 1652) by the addition, at either end of the town, of a second, outer wall defended by large artillery bastions. The site under discussion lies outside the north-west bastion, which is still in position and forms the southern boundary of the site. The preliminary archaeological assessment located the remains of a watercourse which originally extended along the base of the wall and is represented cartographically from the sixteenth century onwards. Several medieval pits were also located, lying outside the ditch. As a result, a small-scale excavation was carried out during the construction phase in July 1996, and an area measuring 17m2 (with three additional trenches) was excavated by hand and machine.
The watercourse
The excavation located the remains of the ditch lying outside the line of the wall, 3m from its base. However, it was in a very truncated state. The most complete profile was exposed at the eastern side of the site, where it was between 8m and 12m wide and 1.3m deep; elsewhere it was less than 0.3m deep. The ditch was filled, at the lowest levels, with gravel and silt deposits containing a large amount of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century pottery. The upper 0.3m was a hard, stony, redeposited boulder clay which was possibly deliberately used as infill after the watercourse had silted up. At the lowest level the water had gouged out several smaller channels in the boulder clay, and it became apparent that the watercourse was not artificially contained or channelled in any way (i.e. by timber revetment).
The bastion wall and pits
The portion of bastion wall within the site is 14.5m long and approximately 8m high, and is built of roughly coursed limestone blocks (averaging 0.6m by 0.35m). It has a pronounced external batter and the internal (i.e. outside the development site) alure, or wall-walk, is still in position at the upper levels. The base of the walls had been enclosed in concrete in modern times, but it was evident that the wall sat on an artificial ‘berm’ or levelled surface.
The excavation also located several large pits cut through the boulder clay. These averaged 2.2m in diameter and 0.7m in depth, and were filled with a uniform hard silty clay.
Rath House, Ferndale Rd, Rathmichael Co. Dublin
