County: Kilkenny Site name: THOMASTOWN: Market Street
Sites and Monuments Record No.: N/A Licence number: 98E0080
Author: Jo Moran
Site type: House - 17th century and Habitation site
Period/Dating: Multi-period
ITM: E 658475m, N 641872m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 52.525075, -7.138271
Three trenches were excavated in the area of a proposed extension behind 5 Market Street, Thomastown.
Trench 1 uncovered a late 17th/early 18th-century roughly paved surface, potentially associated with the early years of the building still standing. Trench 2 intercepted a wall likely to have been part of an early extension to the rear of the building (and replaced by the recently demolished kitchen). Floor level associated with the wall was 0.9m below present ground level. Trench 3 intercepted a length of the wall formerly running beside a lane between the two gables of the standing building beside Market Street.
A box, 1m2, was excavated a further 0.4m by hand in Trench 1, through the paving at the west end of the trench, onto a 12th/13th-century occupation level. An earlier series of clay and midden layers was separated from the 12th/13th-century occupation deposits by a band of sand and gravel. A significant amount of Ham Green sherds, probably from a single vessel, were found pressed into the earlier occupation deposits. Early surfacing in Trench 2 is likely to be of similar date. The flooring and midden deposits may belong to structures built against the north boundary wall.
The standing building was probably in use by the late 17th century (dating from pottery recovered in the test-trenches). It is currently two-storeyed, but the slightly irregular arrangement of the first-floor windows and door suggests an original single-storeyed building. The credit union building immediately to the north has been dated to the 17th century in an architectural survey.
33 Woodlawn, Cashel, Co. Tipperary
