2000:0598 - LIMERICK: Sheep Street, Limerick

This site is located on the eastern side of the King’s Island, Englishtown. Sheep Street, along which the town wall was presumed to run, extends roughly north–south between Meat Market Lane and Gaol Lane and separates two sites. East, and external to the town wall, is Site K.I. 9, a triangular piece of ground, reaching to the Northern Relief Road and defined to the north by Meat Market Lane. West, and inside the town wall, is Site K.I. 10, defined to the north by the yard wall of Mary Street Garda Station, to the west by the eastern boundary of the houses fronting on Mary Street, and to the south by Gaol Lane. In addition to standing remains of the structure known as the Tholsel, located in Gaol Lane, there are ivy-clad walls of a possible late medieval property at the rear of No. 35 Mary Street. Neither of these has been examined in detail to date.

Eight cuttings of various lengths were dug with the aim of locating the town wall, determining the nature of archaeological material on both sides of the wall and identifying, if possible, if any structural remains surviving of the houses described in the Civil Survey (Simington 1938).

In Cuttings 1, 2 and 7 and the extension of Cutting 2 a wall running for a total distance of 43m along the eastern side of Sheep Street was identified. It followed the changes in direction of the line of the street as depicted on both the 1840 and 1872 OS plans. This wall is presumed to be the town wall. It was located close to the existing ground level, and its external face had been used as a foundation for the 19th-century property boundaries and 20th-century houses fronting the eastern side of Sheep Street. This was in contrast to the area to the south of Gaol Lane, under the Northern Relief Road, where the internal face was used as the foundation, and the rest of the wall was under the houses.

The external face of the town wall was exposed to a depth of 2.8m at the southern end of Cutting 2, but elsewhere only the top of the town wall was identified.

At the northern end of the site, restrictions of space (due to fencing and underground cables) meant that the wall was not defined, but this should be possible when this area becomes available for investigation. The difference in width at the southern end (1m, compared to 2m in Cutting 2—located more or less central to the site) may be due to this part of the wall being a later addition to the foundation of the wall here, or may be due to the presence of the mural gate, Gaol Lane Gate. Here, a second wall abutted the western face of the first. Given its proximity to the site of the gate at the eastern end of Gaol Lane, it is possible that this second wall may be part of that structure.

Within the walled town, Cutting 5 was located at right angles to Sheep Street. Here archaeological layers occurred at 1.8–2.2m deep at the western end and at 0.9m at the eastern end. These consisted of black, organic deposits containing bone and shell. A single sherd of local medieval pottery was recovered from this. The fill of the two other cuttings within the walled town, Cuttings 4 and 8, consisted entirely of loose rubble. In Cutting 4, located on the highest part of the site and in an area where there were no buildings depicted on any of the maps (just east of the lane at the back of the houses on Mary Street), this fill was over 2m deep. Cutting 8 was located on the lowest point of the site in an effort to determine if the demolition rubble, found in Cuttings 4 and 5 (upper levels), was ubiquitous. It was located at right angles to Gaol Lane and crossed the side-wall of the last house on the west side of Sheep Street. On both sides of the wall there was loose rubble fill, which kept collapsing, and so the trench was backfilled. It was not possible to determine whether this was cellar fill or demolition spread. Neither cutting, however, contained any evidence of structural remains that could be interpreted as dating to the mid-1650s. In Cutting 5, the walls as exposed all contained brick. Most of the houses described in the Civil Survey (Simington 1938) were cadgework, with one exception, which was stone. This was located ‘east upon the Town Wall’ and to the north of Gaol Lane.

Archaeological layers were also identified outside the wall: in Cutting 2, at over 1.9m, and in Cutting 3, at 0.8m. Judging by the pottery, these layers would appear to date to the 17th or 18th century. Similar deposits were defined further east, during the monitoring of the Northern Relief Road, on a site located to the north of Athlunkard Street (Excavations 1999, 169, 99E0135), where this material has been interpreted at the lower level as being a late medieval town dump, subsequently reclaimed as gardens by the late 16th century.

Reference
Simington, R.C. 1938 Civil Survey 1654–56, County of Limerick. Dublin.

City Hall, Limerick