2000:0262 - DUBLIN: Iveagh Market, Francis Street, Dublin

The Iveagh Market complex was designed by F.G. Hicks, who was responsible for many of the Iveagh Trust buildings in the Liberties. The markets would appear to have been developed to accommodate street traders whose pitches were removed on the redevelopment of the Patrick Street area, along with those who traded in the Blackhall Row market, the stalls of which are visible on the 1836 MS OS plan on nearby Plunkett Street.

The site for the markets was cleared by 1900. This would appear to have involved the demolition of the buildings on the Francis Street frontage practically to foundation level and the levelling of other structures in the yards behind. Most of the site was acquired from Guinness, who had bought out Sweetman’s brewery in 1891, and further properties were purchased to open up Dean Swift Square to Francis Street.

The new market’s frontage was to be recessed 3m back from the original line of the street. In the dry goods hall, the demolition rubble seems to have been left in situ, with small areas being cleared around the concrete foundations and the pillars supporting the balcony. Although there would appear to be greater preservation of the structures in the area underneath the balcony, the centre of the site was mostly free of buildings, being occupied by a large yard and the alleyway between Nos 23 and 24 Francis Street. On completion of the formation work, a concrete floor slab was laid on the rubble, and construction work was completed by 1907. This effectively sealed the ground floors of the 18th-century buildings.

The design utilised modern construction materials and engineering techniques, along with Portmarnock red brick, Portland limestone and Newry granite detailing typical of the Iveagh Trust buildings. The market had two halls catering for dry and wet goods, and the complex included a public washing place and laundry. A market superintendent’s house was constructed in the same style, along with other offices and yards. The market opened in 1907 and was handed over to Dublin Corporation a year later. It ceased trading in 1996, and the laundry area continued to be occupied by the Eastern Health Board until 2000.

A private developer acquired the market complex in 1998, and planning permission was sought to reopen the building as a market and to build a hotel on the site of the public laundry. Archaeological conditions were imposed on the development because of the sensitivity of the underlying deposits.

The site of the market is between the medieval Fair Green to the north and the abbey of St Francis to the south, which occupied the present-day site of the church of St Nicholas of Myra. The wet market on the Lamb Alley frontage was constructed over the medieval city ditch, although the site was probably built upon by the time of publication of John Speed’s map of 1610.

Two initial phases of excavation and survey have been described in Excavations 1999 (67–8). A third phase of excavations investigated the area of the medieval city ditch underneath the wet market. It was initially found that much of the area had been truncated in the 1780s by the insertion of cellars for Sweetman’s brewery. One area had, however, been occupied by a cobbled yard, and excavation proceeded below that. Underneath post-medieval dump layers, the upper fill of the ditch was located along with a length of its outer edge. The upper fills are associated with a cut that adheres to the notional line of the western edge of the city ditch. Six separate fills were recorded, yielding over 280 sherds of medieval pottery, including Dublin-type coarseware dating to the last quarter of the 12th century.

The cut truncated a masonry structure in calp limestone, which had originally filled a construction trench cutting the natural subsoil. The structure survived to five courses on the north elevation and returned to the south at the eastern end, where it had been truncated by the later cut. The return was not excavated, but its internal face was exposed within its construction cut. Up to 2.4m of the north elevation was exposed, and it is unlikely that the structure extended much further to the east. Its western end was not formally faced and sat in a narrow construction trench. The structure measured 0.7–0.72m in thickness and survived to 0.94m. It had slipped slightly to the north because of its position along the edge of a substantial cut in the natural subsoil. The cut extended for 0.8m west of the structure within the area of excavation. The northern elevation of the structure would have been roughly along the same line had it not slipped into the cut.

Although an adequate interpretation of the medieval features in this area is compromised somewhat by the small area excavated, a sequence has been established where, in quick succession, the primary ditch cut had a masonry structure constructed along its southern edge, which slipped slightly into the fills before being disturbed by the later ditch recut. It would not appear that the remains of the structure constitute a domestic building, and the structure may therefore be better interpreted as a bridge abutment or a mill. Further excavation of the area is necessary to satisfactorily interpret the feature.

The fourth phase involved the test excavation of the site of a proposed hotel, immediately to the north of the market in an area formerly occupied by the Eastern Health Board. This established that the archaeology in the medieval Fair Green area was truncated by the laundry buildings, which were built to fumigate the clothes sold in the market. It also confirmed the position of the city ditch to the north of the area previously investigated.

A fifth phase of excavation revisited the wet market where the 18th-century houses and their back yards were excavated to subsoil. The buildings fronting Francis Street were interpreted as being Dutch Billys, the tall, narrow, gable-fronted houses that were common in the city in the late 17th and 18th centuries. They fronted cobbled yards, the plots of which were significantly narrower than the buildings, indicating that the buildings had taken over medieval plots. The buildings extended out and encroached the adjacent laneways, which over the passage of time became narrow entries.

The initial findings indicate that while the plot frontages were scarped out to provide hard ground for the brick foundations, there was survival of medieval deposits below the cobbled yards to the rear. The 18th-century plot boundary between Nos 22 and 23 Francis Street was found to replicate two earlier plot divisions, the earliest possibly dating to the 14th century on the basis of the pottery recovered.

A series of domestic refuse pits was investigated to the south of the Francis Street plots. These are probably associated with properties running off a laneway, which by the 18th century was known as Binn’s Court. While it was not possible to fully excavate all the pits because of their position underneath the market balcony, those fully excavated were found to contain large quantities of local pottery, which would appear to be 14th-century in date. Bulk soil samples are currently undergoing analysis. Unfortunately, there was no direct stratigraphical link between the Francis Street plots and the Binn’s Court activity. The pits will be further investigated when the market walls are underpinned in 2001.

The results of the various stages of excavation and survey have started to present a fuller picture of an extramural Dublin suburb in the later medieval and early modern periods and, in particular of the continuity of plot boundaries from the medieval period into the 18th century. Further excavation prior to underpinning will hopefully link the area of the Francis Street plots with the city ditch to the east.

2 Killiney View, Albert Road Lower, Glenageary, Co. Dublin