1997:038 - CORK: Philips Lane/Grattan Street, Cork

The site was excavated in advance of development over a period of twelve weeks from June to August 1997. Some areas were subsequently monitored as development progressed. A total area of approximately 400m2 was excavated in three cuttings.

Cutting 1, 15m x 10m, was opened at the western edge of the site, at the junction of Grattan Street and Philips Lane. A 15m-stretch of the western side of the city wall was uncovered. The wall in this area had originally been built in the late 13th/early 14th century and was rebuilt in the 17th. There was a gateway through the wall in the 17th century, leading from Philips Lane onto the modern Grattan Street.

The layers inside the city wall were mainly degraded organic dump layers which had been cut at various times by a series of drainage channels. There was no evidence for habitation close to the city wall in the medieval period.

Cutting 2 consisted of an 11m x 8m trench, opened in the centre of the site along the northern edge of Philips Lane. Some organic layers dating from the 13th/14th century survived in the base of the trench, but much of the evidence for earlier occupation had been removed by large stone-lined pits or cisterns which were built in the 18th century. Prior to that date it appears as if the laneway now known as Philips Lane was originally 1–2m further north.

Cutting 3 measured approximately 20m x 8m and was opened in the area of a proposed lift-shaft. This was the cutting closest to North Main Street. The initial deposits in this area, as in Cutting 2, were layers of organic material which contained pottery dating from the 13th/14th century.

The most significant discovery in this area was a stone-built rectangular house which was probably 14th-century in date. The house measured 6.6m north-south x 12.15m east-west and was constructed of limestone walls over offset footing. It had two opposing doorways. The 'front' door was located in the east wall close to the south-east corner of the building and the 'back' door was in the west wall close to the south-west corner of the house. Both doorways had door recesses in the south wall. Pieces of cut and dressed Dundry stone had been used in the east doorway. The remains of stone steps on the north side of, and outside, this entrance indicate that there may also have been a doorway to the upper floors from first-floor level.

Little of the interior of the house was excavated. There did not seem to be a formal floor surface though some floor areas within the house had been mortared. There was a difference in the floor surface in the area between the two doors and in the rest of the building, which may indicate that there was a passageway between the two doors that was separate from the rest of the ground floor of the house.

The south wall of the building was on the line of a property boundary and it is possible that the passage functioned as a laneway giving access to the area to the rear of the house. The passage could be closed off if necessary.

A layer of charcoal and burnt clay covered by a thick layer of roof slate overlay the ground-floor surface of the house, indicating that the interior of the house was destroyed by fire. A large stone drain was associated with this house.

Later, possibly in the 17th century, another stone building, which measured at least 6.8m north-south and 7.8m east-west, had been built to the south-east of House 1, and part of the walls of the earlier house were incorporated into the later building.

Archaeological Services Unit, University College Cork