County: Limerick Site name: LIMERICK: Mary Street
Sites and Monuments Record No.: SMR 5:17 Licence number: —
Author: Celie O Rahilly, Limerick Corporation
Site type: Historic town
Period/Dating: Multi-period
ITM: E 557995m, N 657505m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 52.667095, -8.620996
This site is located within the Englishtown on the east side of what was known in the medieval period as High Street, close to its southern end. To the south is Fish Lane, which is of medieval origin; to the east is the new Northern Relief Road; and to the north is a ‘lane’, more recently formed (not marked on 1938 plan), probably made possible by a vacant lot on the Mary Street frontage.
Work on this site involved monitoring six boreholes, made with a percussion drill, for soil investigation purposes. It would appear from the evidence provided by the two boreholes close to the Mary Street frontage that the mid- to late-19th-century buildings here were cellared. A minimal archaeological horizon, at 2.5–2.7m in Borehole 1 and 2.4–2.5m in Borehole 2, survived at the interface of the cellar floor and natural clay. The evidence provided by the two cuts, located approximately central to the site, showed that there was c. 1m of building debris overlying what appeared to be archaeological deposits, although the only find recovered was a fragment of a quernstone. The natural clay/gravel occurred at a depth of 3m. The last two boreholes were located close to the eastern boundary of the site. Here archaeological deposits were identified at 1.6m in Borehole 5 and 2.5m in Borehole 6.
Based on the findings, the overburden from an L-shaped area of the site was removed prior to its being archaeologically excavated. During the course of the removal, the northern side-wall of a late medieval undercroft was identified. The archaeological excavation was subsequently carried out by Aegis Archaeology (see Excavations 2000, No. 594).
City Hall, Limerick
