1999:452 - KILKENNY: Burgermac, 20 Rose Inn Street, Kilkenny

Monitoring was carried out here between 11 February and 1 March 1999 and involved a total of seven days on site.

A building survey was carried out by Declan Murtagh on 20 June 1998 to assess the historic fabric of the upstanding remains, which consisted of a terraced, three-bay, three-storey house with a steep pitched roof, constructed c. 1800.

The modern Rose Inn Street was an important axis in the medieval city of Kilkenny. The curve of the street from St John's Bridge towards High Street may delimit the original outer defences of the castle. Situated to the south of the early 13th-century St Mary's Church, the site of No. 20 Rose Inn Street, and the adjoining plots, represents a break in the continuity of medieval burgage plot alignment that ran perpendicular to High Street (Bradley 1990, 69). Later historical sources document the presence of properties fronting onto Rose Inn Street. A composite map derived from the major cartographic sources for the city shows the site of the late medieval tavern The Sheaf Inn in the vicinity of the site under investigation (Hogan 1860–1, 350). The Urban Archaeological Survey notes that Bishop Rothe's College, in existence between 1642 and 1650, was in the vicinity of Nos 20–21 Rose Inn Street (1993, 82). However, the exact location of these buildings has yet to be identified.

It was recommended that all below-ground site works be subject to an archaeological monitoring condition. Monitoring involved general ground reduction to a depth of c. 0.6m at the western end of the building and the excavation of foundation trenches to an approximate depth of 0.6m in the eastern end of the building.

Ground reduction at the rear (western end) of the site revealed the presence of six negative features cut into natural subsoil. Development did not have any adverse physical impact on the below-ground archaeological resource, as the negative features were all revealed c. 50mm below the level of mechanical excavation. The six features were revealed through limited hand-excavation undertaken across the entire site, after mechanical excavation had stopped. Hand-excavation involved only removal of loose material accumulated over the archaeological features as a result of the mechanical excavation and did not involve any excavation of the in situ negative features.

Discussion with the Excavation Licences Section of Dúchas The Heritage Service regarding the preferred management strategy for the archaeological resource was undertaken at the time of fieldwork. This resulted in all of the recorded archaeological features being preserved in situ as the development failed to have an adverse impact on these archaeological remains.

No archaeological features or portable finds were recorded from the eastern part of the site. The natural subsoil was sealed by a mixture of brown/grey, gravelly clay and modern rubble with occasional charcoal flecking and fragments of oyster shell. These are interpreted as representing redeposited archaeological layers, thus extending the image of meaningful archaeological deposits previously surviving across the full extent of the site.

The recording of potentially redeposited archaeological deposits along with six negative features testifies to the presence of meaningful cultural remains from within the general development area. As a number of these cuts extend beyond the development site in both a northerly and a southerly direction, it is recommended that any future developments in the area be undertaken in conjunction with a detailed archaeological management plan.

References
Bradley, J. 1990 Medieval Kilkenny City. In W. Nolan and K. Whelan (eds), Kilkenny: history and society.
Hogan, J. 1860–1 Map of the city of Kilkenny. Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, 350–4.

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