1999:820 - CASHEL: Friar's Street, Tipperary

Excavation of Cashel's medieval town wall and associated features was conducted before the construction of a library, adjacent to Friar Street. The site covered an area of 110m2. The excavated area consisted of the north-south basal remains of the town wall, built c. 1265. The wall was built as two separate walls, running parallel to each other. They were constructed of mortar-bonded, dressed, inner and outer faces with a fill of small stone and mortar. Existing portions of the town wall throughout the town showed that this double wall would have been conjoined at parapet level. The footing of the outer wall on the excavation site was 0.4m below the inner portion. The outer wall also showed evidence of an external batter. A multi-phase external defensive ditch was revealed. Its maximum depth was 2.4m below the ground level, but it had a depth of 1.4m from the footing of the external wall. Subsequent disturbance of the ground had obliterated the external aspect of the ditch. However, it can be estimated that its full extent was c. 6m wide. Animal bone and 13th–14th-century pottery were recovered from the wall and ditch area, and 17th-century disturbance of the walled area divulged a cobbled path inside the walled area that would have traversed the wall itself. The town ditch had been allowed to silt up. Part of the silted area had been removed to create a stone-lined trough that had reused stone from the town wall. The fill of the trough's revetting structure was hard-packed, redeposited, natural soil, which had some scant evidence of being paved with limestone flagstones. The artefactual nature of the trough and cobbled path was consistent with a 17th-century date.

The inner portion of the town wall was built on the remains of a substantial backfilled ditch that extended beyond the excavation area. It was 1.8m deep. Part of a human burial was recovered from the base of this ditch. The backfill contained 13th–14th-century pottery. It is probable that the pottery entered here during the backfilling phase. The nature of the backfill is consistent with bank material. It is possible that this ditch and bank arrangement has some association with the nearby St John's Cathedral. St John's Cathedral is on the site of an earlier, medieval church. Feehan's Road immediately to the south of St John's Cathedral describes a curve, which may be the boundary of an ecclesiastical enclosure. If the orientation of the low ridge on which St John's Cathedral stands is considered with the curve of Feehan's Road, it is not implausible that the backfilled ditch forms part of an ecclesiastical enclosure. The partially excavated remains of the human burial would substantiate an ecclesiastical perspective.

25 Westpark, Blessington, Co. Wicklow