2000:0595 - LIMERICK: Nicholas Street, Limerick

The excavation of a trench measuring 8m by 7m was carried out to the rear of a building on Nicholas Street, Limerick. The brief of the excavation was to remove the overburden material overlying an undercroft structure, which was revealed during previous test-trench excavations carried out at this site by Celie O Rahilly (Excavations 1994, 58; Excavations 1995, 56, 94E0071). The roof, façade and rear walls of the building were absent, and only occasional amounts of building debris were visible on the ground surface. The excavation trench was located a distance of 12m from the modern street frontage.

Following the removal of the modern material, a number of features were revealed, including disturbed flagstone surfaces and stretches of low brick walls. These surfaces and walls were the remains of yard features that overlay a mortar-rich layer with moderate inclusions of building materials, including brick fragments. This layer was found to overlay the roof of the vaulted undercroft structure, which appeared to be supported by the extant north and south walls of the building. The roof of the undercroft was in relatively good condition, although it has been partially removed by disturbance at the west end, with the stonework quite unstable at the north-eastern corner. The interior appeared to be completely backfilled. The roof was formed from roughly hewn, decaying limestone blocks that were set on edge; these ranged from 0.4m to 0.5m in length. The roof was found to abut a cross-wall of the building at the west end of the trench and was not found in any of the earlier test-trenches on the other side of this wall.

The entrance to the undercroft was uncovered at the east end of this trench during the 1995 test investigations. It therefore appeared that the full extent of the roof has been revealed within this 8m by 7m trench. There were a number of corbels revealed in the walls on the north and south sides of the building, which supported a floor surface that overlay the vaulted undercroft roof. There were no other remains of this floor surface evident in the trench. The later brick and flagstone features uncovered in the trench dated to the post-medieval/early modern period and were found to post-date the floor surface that would have been supported by the corbels. The interior of the undercroft was not investigated, and it was therefore not possible to date or interpret this structure further at this time.

16 Avondale Court, Corbally, Limerick