1997:163 - DUBLIN: Osmond House, Ship Street Little, Dublin

Archaeological monitoring was carried out during construction at the Chief State Solicitor's Office at Osmond House, Ship Street, Dublin 2. The site lies in an area of the highest archaeological sensitivity, adjacent to Dublin Castle, the city wall and ditch and the original bed of the River Poddle. Pre-development excavation in 1993 by L. Simpson on the site immediately to the west (with earlier testing by others) yielded evidence for a very deep accumulation of medieval deposits (Excavations 1993, 25–6, 93E0132). The sequence on the site indicated that a series of habitation levels with plank-built structures accumulated until around the mid-13th century. After that date the area appears to have seen several episodes of dumping.

The archaeological conditions attached to the site required monitoring and the removal of a high earthen bank at the western end of the site, an examination of the extruded material from piles inserted for the new building, and monitoring the excavation for ground-beams.

No archaeological deposits were identified during the monitoring. The bank material was made up of a loose brown friable humic clay, containing many fragments of red brick and other 19th-century inclusions. No walls, cobbling or other post-medieval structures were evident in the fill. It appeared that the bank was made up of 19th-century demolition rubble. A stratigraphy was established throughout the site on the basis of the extruded material emanating from the piles. A hard grey stony natural deposit occurred at c. 3m OD. Above this a 2m deposit of grey/black silty clay with a low concentration of shell, bone, leather scraps and two sherds of 12th- and 13th-century pottery was identified. The uppermost 2m of stratigraphy consisted of mixed disturbed rubble. The ground-beams and foundation trenches did not pierce any archaeological soils.

Rath House, Ferndale Road, Rathmichael, Co. Dublin.