1998:341 - CALLAN: Callan Co-op, West Street, Kilkenny

Test excavations were carried out at the site of a proposed filling station at Callan Co-op in June 1998, in response to a planning condition. The site lies beside West Street, immediately west of Skerry's Castle, a tower-house originally protecting one of the town gates. A stone wall standing 2.5m high forms the boundary between the site and the site of the tower-house (the wall was surveyed as part of the site assessment). A mill lies on the west side of the site, and King's River flows to the north.

During initial test excavations a late 17th-century wall (keyed into the boundary wall) was uncovered overlying earlier deposits in the area of the fuel tanks. As a result another test-trench was excavated towards the rear of the site to find an alternative location for the fuel tanks.

A number of walls were recorded and roughly dated. Two appeared to date to the late 17th/early 18th century (contemporary with the boundary wall between the site and Skerry's Castle?), and a clay-bonded wall pre-dated the site boundary wall. It is probably contemporary with the early years of Skerry's Castle.

Otherwise the trenches cut through late 17th/ 18th-century garden soils and garden features, which appeared to be the earliest surviving remains this far from the street front. The construction trench at a right angle to the east boundary wall revealed no evidence of a town fosse.

Groundworks associated with the development have not disturbed structural remains close to the street front. The ground level over the site has also been raised with rubble and hard-core, by between 0.25m and 0.75m, since the last generation of buildings on the site was demolished. Because of this and because the site drops almost 2m from front to rear little archaeological damage has been caused to surviving archaeological deposits.

33 Woodlawn, Cashel, Co. Tipperary