1999:846 - DUNGARVAN: Davitts Quay/Old Market House, Waterford

Resurfacing of and relaying services below Davitts Quay, beside Dungarvan Castle, commenced in October 1999 without archaeological supervision. Shortly afterwards a monitor was appointed for further works, and cuts were made in the backfilled quay to assess the damage from recent groundworks.

Close to the shell keep an earlier quay was found 0.6m below the cobbled surface of Davitts Quay, and outcropping bedrock was found at the foot of the shell keep, close to an original door. The earlier quay was probably built in the 18th century, perhaps in the 17th century, but the bedrock shelf outside the shell keep was probably used as a quay from the beginning, in the late 12th/early 13th century.

Resurfacing the pavement outside the Old Market House, at the junction of Church Street and Parnell Street (formerly Market Place), was monitored at the start of December 1999. The building had been undergoing a conversion since August. Exposed fragments of the fabric suggested a construction date at the end of the 17th or early in the 18th century, when the structure was used as an arcaded market area with hall above.

Outside the building, construction waste overlay silt on a surface of beach gravel, close to present ground level but almost undamaged by the present pavement work. The surface is potentially late medieval/post-medieval (from pottery) and was generally trampled directly into the clay subsoil. A few earlier features were observed, cut by recent trenches, but no earlier surfaces. The old ground appeared to drop away to the south, into a hollow running under Quay Street and extending west under the Church Street/Parnell Street site investigated in November 1998 and April 1999 (see No. 845, Excavations 1999).

Church Lane, Stradbally, Co. Waterford