County: Tipperary Site name: CASHEL: Friar Street
Sites and Monuments Record No.: SMR 61:25 Licence number: 96E0191
Author: Mary Henry
Site type: Excavation - miscellaneous
Period/Dating: Modern (AD 1750-AD 2000)
ITM: E 607448m, N 640747m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 52.518044, -7.890249
The testing at Friar Street, Cashel, took place prior to the construction of a petrol filling station and the laying of underground storage fuel tanks. The only area of proposed disturbance was the site of the underground ranks. An area measuring 5m2 was rested in advance of the laying of the tanks. It was only 1.5m to the east of the medieval town wall. The purpose of the test was to establish the presence/absence of a town ditch.
There was no trace of a town ditch outside the medieval wall or of discernible stratified layers in the area tested. Undisturbed sands and boulder clay occurred between 0.7m and 1.2m below the modern ground level. The remains of a cobbled yard were found 0.3m below modern ground level. A small number of nineteenth-century pottery sherds were found beneath the cobbles. At a slightly lower level than the cobbled yard the remains of a cobbled path was uncovered. It extended to the town wall, where it linked up with a drainage culvert. The cobbled path was designed to carry waste to the culvert which abutted the town wall. The cobbled yard and culvert were confined to an area between the back of the houses that formerly fronted this stretch of Friar Street and the town wall.
Two test-trenches were dug within the 5m2 area and below the level of the cobbled yard. There were no discernible stratified layers in the trenches and boulder clay occurred at high levels. The natural clays and sands occurred beneath a deposit of dark grey-brown coarse-grained soil. This dark soil was 0.3m thick, had very few inclusions and contained no dating evidence. Disturbance was greater in the second trench owing to the presence of a soak-pit at a depth of 0.6m below modern ground level. Boulder clay occurred in this trench at a depth of 1.2m below modern ground level.
The findings from the test indicated that there was no town ditch outside the town wall and there was no evidence remaining to suggest that medieval activities occurred in this area.
1 Jervis Place, Clonmel, Co. Tipperary
