1999:128 - DERRY: Bishop's Street Without, Derry

An excavation funded by Built Heritage, EHS, was undertaken on this site from 9 February to 14 May 1999. The excavation took place before housing construction within a zone of potential urban archaeology.

The site measured c. 90m x 35m, and extensive archaeological remains were uncovered during the excavation. In part, these remains provided evidence of at least two phases of extramural occupation outside Bishop's Gate during the 17th century. This evidence took the form of drainage gullies, rubbish pits, possible property boundaries and cobbled surfaces. Preliminary post-excavation work suggests that there was an early phase of occupation, dating to the first half of the 17th century, followed by secondary occupation during the later part of that century. No direct structural evidence of the actual 17th-century houses was recovered, as these were almost certainly removed during a phase of activity on site dated to the commencement of the Jacobite siege in 1688–9.

Further evidence of the siege was uncovered in the form of a north-west/south-east-orientated ditch fronting the destroyed earthwork ravelin before Bishop's Gate. The extant remains of a sally port 2.6m wide interrupted the ditch. A larger ditch, scarped from the sloping ground outside Double Bastion, was exposed to the north-west of the ravelin. This was a maximum of 9.8m wide and 2.8m deep. The larger ditch may have been part of an earthwork constructed to protect the flanks of the ravelin and Double Bastion during the siege of 1688–9. The excavation also recovered over 5000 artefacts of various types. These include pottery sherds of Irish, English and Continental origin, metal artefacts, bone artefacts, clay pipes and glass.

5–33 Hill Street, Belfast BT1 2LA