1998:273 - DINGLE: Main Street, Kerry

This test excavation and licensed monitoring was a condition of planning permission granted to P&T Fitzgerald for a major development at the rear of their supermarket on Main Street. The first phase of the development was previously reported (Excavations 1997, 85, 97E0153). This second phase was undertaken in proximity to the line of the medieval town wall and within the archaeological zone of Dingle town.

The town of Dingle was most likely built on virgin ground in the Anglo-Norman period. It is likely that it was walled towards the end of the 16th century. Traces of the town wall were recorded in the mid-19th century by Richard Hitchcock, and the 1st and 2nd editions of the OS maps (1841; 1896) also show the line of the town wall. The coherent footprint of the medieval town comprising the linear layout of main street and rear burgage plots remains virtually intact today.

Test excavation work concentrated on the extreme south-western corner of the site, where upstanding rubble-built walls, exposed by the demolition of sheds, were locally believed to be the remnants of the original town walls. The walls displayed at least two distinct building techniques in the excavation area. It was obvious at the outset that the level of the development site had been greatly raised in the past. Indeed the external ground level was some 2m below current ground level.

A hand-dug trench measuring 6m x 1.3m was opened at the base of the walls in the south-west limit of the site. The main fill consisted of introduced loose stones and other dump material, consistent with the raising of the ground level in the 18th and 19th centuries. Sixteen contexts were recorded, including the basal remains of two sandstone rib walls, each abutting the southern boundary wall. Clay pipe fragments, sherds of post-medieval and modern pottery, shells and occasional faunal remains were recovered. A degraded sherd of medieval pottery was recovered. The subsurface sections of the boundary wall confirmed differing construction techniques; however, it was not found to be earlier than the 18th century.

Monitoring of all disturbance on site was undertaken. Over forty pads were excavated by mechanical digger to an average depth of 1m. Most of these contained fills of sandstone trunking with little or no organic material, although at two pad locations the same sequence of deposits and fills that was recovered in the excavation trench was present. In some areas the trunking overlay sterile natural, and this was consistent with the findings from the previous year’s excavations. In more pads the trunking overlay a dark brown, mixed fill, which produced post-medieval and early modern pottery sherds, shells, slate fragments and some small faunal remains. The service trenches likewise consisted mainly of sandstone rubble fill. It was obvious that the level of the development site was raised in the 18th/19th century.

Most of the finds indicate that early 19th- and possibly late 18th-century activity destroyed earlier levels. Medieval pottery sherds were recovered, but these were found in introduced fill.