County: Tipperary Site name: CLONMEL: 36/37 Parnell Street
Sites and Monuments Record No.: N/A Licence number: 99E0649 ext.
Author: Jo Moran, Archaeografix
Site type: Historic town
Period/Dating: Multi-period
ITM: E 620531m, N 622485m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 52.353575, -7.698606
An archaeological impact assessment of the site, which included a report on the standing building and test excavations (Excavations 1999, 287), was carried out at the request of Clonmel Corporation, ahead of demolition of the existing building on the site and construction of a four-storey building in its place. The site lies outside the medieval walled town in the area of the 17th-century east suburbs. After considering the results of the assessment, Dúchas The Heritage Service recommended monitoring of all groundworks.
The existing concrete floor was retained, and holes for foundation pads were cut through it. Three test-trenches were cut through the floor as part of the assessment; a further fifteen were cut for the foundations. Monitoring of groundworks and limited excavation identified the remnants of a medieval cultivation soil with possible medieval features cut into it, in the ground set back from the street front. In Test-trench 1 a similar soil was identified to that seen in excavations carried out during 1999 to the rear of Hearn’s Hotel (Excavations 1999, 287, 99E0497) to the west of the development site and to the rear of 33 Parnell Street (see Excavations 2000, No. 930), both close to the jail wall.
A deep cultivation soil overlay the early soil and was identified in most trenches set back from the street front under the recent rubble. In Trench 11 the later soil was cut by a sequence of ditches, which produced 17th- and early 18th-century pottery. The earlier ditches were probably associated with cultivation; the later and larger one may have been a property boundary.
Groundworks close to the street front were kept shallow. Damaged paving, wall foundations and a box drain exposed in the trenches were of 18th/19th-century date. A robber trench close to the later back wall produced 17th/early 18th-century glazed ridge tiles, suggesting an earlier generation of buildings on the street front. However, serious damage associated with petrol tanks would have removed some or most of the earlier buildings beside the street (excavations for foundation pads mainly cut recent infill).
Knockrower Road, Stradbally, Co. Waterford
