County: Cork Site name: YOUGHAL: 2–3 South Main Street
Sites and Monuments Record No.: N/A Licence number: 98E0163
Author: Jacinta Kiely, Eachtra Archaeological Projects
Site type: No archaeology found
Period/Dating: N/A
ITM: E 610539m, N 577842m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 51.952575, -7.846676
Site testing was carried out to fulfil a request for information from Youghal UDC in relation to an application for planning permission to construct a dwelling-house at the rear of No. 3 South Main Street. The town of Youghal may have originated as a Hiberno-Norse port in the 9th century. It was walled in the early 13th century. The walled area of Basetown, or Irishtown, conjoined the main walled town of Youghal to the south and may have been walled after 1462. The development site lay at the south-western corner of Basetown.
The site was bounded to the south-west and north-west by stone walls that may have been built on the line of the original town walls. There was a level bank in the south-western portion of the site, 5.2m wide and 1.8m high; the remainder of the site sloped to the north-east.
Four trenches were opened on the proposed line of the house foundations. Trenches 1 (4m x 1.5m x 1.2m) and 2 (3m x 1.5m x 1.2m) were opened on the surface of the level bank. In each trench loose, voiding, dark brown silty sand with 60% stone was found directly under the sod. There were a number of modern inclusions within it.
Trenches 3 and 4 measured 5m x 1.5m and 1m2 respectively, both yielded black, silty sand with occasional modern inclusions under the sod. The black sand varied from 0.4m to 0.6m deep and overlay the natural. No archaeological stratigraphy, features or artefacts were uncovered in any of the trenches excavated.
Clover Hill, Mallow, Co. Cork
