1997:348 - LIMERICK: Athlunkard Street to Sir Harry's Mall (Northern Relief Road, Phase 2), Limerick

Phase 2 of the Northern Relief Road extended south from Athlunkard Street to Sir Harry’s Mall, where a new bridge will be located over the Abbey River to Lock Quay. Archaeological work in advance of construction was done in stages. Two full-scale excavations were carried out, one at the site of St Francis’s Abbey by F.M. Hurley (Excavations 1996, 69–70, 95E0218), the other at the site of the priory of the Fratres Cruciferi by Ken Hanley (see Excavations 1997, No. 351), and testing in the area of the town wall along Sheep Street was carried out by the writer. Monitoring of the construction is still in progress at time of writing.

The internal face of the town wall was located on the northern side of Sheep Street just below the street surface. It ran west for 11m from the east end of the street, then north-west for 19m. The wall was 2m wide. The external face was exposed to a height of over 2m, the internal one to the level of the plinth.

On the external side the area between the wall and Long Lane, to the north, was cleared of over 2.5m of 18th/19th-century fill, with some remains of structures relating to this period, to the level required for the road construction.

Along this face, exploratory trenches were dug by hand in order to determine the extent of various features which were identified. One trench against the wall was dug by machine to a depth of 2.14m OD. In this, the wall footing was identified but flooding prevented excavation. It was recorded and a section was drawn. Immediately east of the trench a series of upright posts was exposed at 2.85m OD. The pottery finds associated with these suggest a 13th-century date. The second trench was located parallel to the wall further west, and various deposits of similar date were identified. Located at the base of the wall near the north-western end was an arch, to the south of which intrusive 18th-century activity was defined. This appeared to relate to an attempt to insert a drain.

At the extreme northern end, a 19th-century cellar had been built fronting Long Lane, using the external face of the wall as its western side. A line of slabs, continuing on the same alignment as the external face of the town wall, may be all that remained below the cellar floor at 2.6–2.9m OD. It was not possible to open up the area beyond the cellar as this was outside the fence.

The external face of the town wall was cleaned and surveyed by photogrammetry. It was clearly built in two phases. The southern part was battered and built with well-fitting courses of large blockwork. The section to the north was built with smaller stones. The upper part of the external face had been almost entirely robbed out and adapted to accommodate the frontages of the 19th-century houses fronting Sheep Street.

Apart from six test-trenches, the internal face of the wall was only exposed to any great height in the northernmost trench, where boulder clay at 2.96m OD was identified in order to see if the arch showed through on the internal face. This was not the case.

This face reflected the same change in build noted between the two lengths of wall. The surviving top of the southern part was fairly even, but a 19th-century culvert extending down Sheep Street was built against the face and the uppermost course of stones were repaired with modern mortar and small infill stones in order to seat the capstones. Further work, early in 1998, revealed a continuation eastwards of the culvert for c. 7m. Below the culvert the plinth of the wall was exposed at c. 4.5m OD. This continued along the northern stretch of wall for just over 5m from the bend, where it petered out. At 2m from the same point an upper plinth, 0.4m higher, was identified running the full length of the exposed wall. Above this, the internal face was c. 1m higher than the external face, having apparently been rebuilt as a foundation for the later houses, although the medieval core survived in places at the higher level, with only the actual facing-stones having been replaced. Below the plinth the internal face was built with unmortared, randomly coursed rubble masonry.

The foundation cut for the town wall was exposed in the trench sections and can be dated from the pottery to the 13th century. It cut an accumulation of deposits also of medieval date. The only features were two superimposed stone culverts, one located close to the level of the boulder clay, the other at a higher level, and a series of posts.