1997:569 - DUNGARVAN: Davitt's Quay/Thompson's Lane, Waterford

Two trenches were cut by machine across the line of the late 17th-century town wall, and a third on the site of a proposed lift-well, on the line of the wall.

In the trench close to Thompson’s Lane the town wall had been robbed to its base, and a large pit had been quarried into the clay subsoil behind and built over in the 18th century. On the site of the proposed lift-well the town wall had been removed and replaced with the side wall of a building in the late 18th/early 19th century, but further west the town wall survived almost to present ground level.

The wall is 1.2m wide at its truncated top, on a narrow stone plinth of several courses set into beach sand. No cobbled surface was found on either side of the wall (see Excavations 1997, No. 568). A cavity behind the wall at construction is either a clay pit or the space between the wall and the contemporary cliff-line. No pottery was recovered from construction deposits but a post-medieval date is suggested by the use of blue roof slate as pinnings in the wall.

The ground was truncated south of the wall in the late 18th/early 19th century, to provide fill behind the new quays on the seaward side. Backfill in a number of truncated pits suggests that the ground was cultivated or fallow throughout the medieval period. There were no indications of buildings on site before the 18th century. An infilled ditch cut by two clay pits is likely to be an early land division or drain, part of the medieval or late prehistoric landscape.

Arbour Hill, Fethard, Co. Tipperary