1996:196 - NAAS: Corban’s Lane/South Main Street, Kildare

Trial-trenching in advance of development at this site (situated on the corner of Corban’s Lane and South Main Street) established that there was a ditch running east-west through the site, parallel to Corban’s Lane. The lane had been equated with part of the town defences but this had never been established.

At the east side of the site the ditch had been interfered with by the digging of a shallow cellar, which had a fireplace with heavily vitrified bricks and a 50mm layer of charcoal with coal particles over a thick, compacted clay floor. At the west (Main Street) side the ditch was cut by later foundations and service trenches; no terminus was found and it appeared to be continuing beneath the level of the present pavement.

Two cuttings (each 2m wide) through the ditch were excavated. It was established that the ditch had a maximum surviving width of 2.7m and a depth of 0.7m. There was 0.5m of overburden and various later features overlay the remaining undisturbed ditch fill, which consisted of a dark, compact, brown clay/sand with loam but not a high organic content, maximum depth 0.38m. To either side of this was a less stony, looser fill containing more gravel and sand, and it appeared that there had been initial slip and rapid filling of the base of the ditch, which was U-shaped in section.

With the exception of one pot, all the pottery (51 sherds) recovered from the undisturbed ditch fills were datable to the twelfth–fourteenth centuries and comprise Dublin-type wares (hand-built, wheel-turned and cooking wares), South Leinster cooking ware and temper-free ware. Four pieces from the same pot were of a possible late medieval imported ware (perhaps from south-west England) and these were from high in the presumed undisturbed fill. Animal bone, some of it articulated, was recovered, but it was not very plentiful.

In the western cuffing (closest to the Main Street) a number of features lay on or intruded into the ditch fill. These consisted of a spread of cobbles adjacent to a small iron dish (0.24m x .0.28m) set into a small depression in the ditch fill.

The cobbles were edging it but otherwise were haphazardly laid. Above these was a second cobbled spread, overlying the ditch cut on the south side and abutting a pit (maximum width 1. 12m and cutto a depth of 0.62m into the underlying fill) which lay towards the centre of the ditch. It contained refuse, including bone, pottery, fragments of clay pipes, a metal spoon of possible seventeenth-century date, and some corroded iron objects.

The upper levels of the various fills had been cut into by wall foundations (pre-dating the structures just removed), a stone and brick drain, and sewerage pipes. The stone drain contained medieval pottery as well as glass and post-medieval pottery (Staffordshire slipware and tin-glazed ware). The area to the north (town side) of the ditch was also investigated to check for any further associated features, but the levels above undisturbed boulder clay were extensively disturbed by wall foundations, service pipes and a dump of slates. A layer of well-set cobbles, fire-reddened and with associated charcoal, occurred at the northern side of this cutting under a heavy modern concrete layer. It was a maximum of 0.65m wide. No trace of a bank or wall could be found.

It is clear that the ditch was cut some time in the twelfth to fourteenth centuries. Its shallow profile and narrowness may make it seem an unlikely defensive feature, but it does occur on the line of Corban’s Lane, which encloses the southeastern side of Naas. The presence of slippage and a homogeneous fill may indicate a short period of use or episodes of cleaning prior to its going out of use. However, it is cutthrough very loose stony gravels and boulder clay and could not have been dug to any greater depth without collapse; also it would have been difficult to prevent slippage from its sides. It appears that as a part of the defences of the town of Naas it may have been superseded by an alternative line, most probably further to the south, as the ground is rising from the site of the ditch and falls again beyond the South Motte.