County: Wexford Site name: WEXFORD: Custom House Quay/Common Quay Street
Sites and Monuments Record No.: SMR 37:32 Licence number: 99E0604
Author: Paul Stevens, Margaret Gowen & Co. Ltd.
Site type: Excavation - miscellaneous
Period/Dating: Modern (AD 1750-AD 2000)
ITM: E 704802m, N 621925m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 52.338912, -6.462036
Test-trenching was carried out in April 2000 for a proposed development at the site of the L & N supermarket and Corporation carpark, between Custom House Quay, Church Lane and Common Quay Street. The site is in the centre of Wexford town, close to the waterfront and within the area of archaeological potential for Wexford. The proposed development involves a mixture of retail units, offices, apartments in four- and five-storey residential units and a multi-storey carpark, and the creation of a new urban space between Custom House Quay and North Main Street, with rerouting of access to the quays.
Four test-trenches were opened by mechanical excavator in the carpark area of the site. They were between 8m and 16m long, 1.2m wide and between 2m and 3m deep. Substantial early modern land reclamation from the last two centuries was noted in all trenches, to a maximum depth of 2.4m. A single architectural cut-stone artefact was recovered from a disturbed modern context in Trench 4A, close to St Iberius’s Church. This was a left-section, granite window hood-moulding of 16th/17th-century date and probably originated from an earlier church on the site recorded in 1690 and demolished in 1760 to make way for the present church by John Roberts.
No archaeological soils were encountered. However, further monitoring of this large development is expected.
2 Killiney View, Albert Road Lower, Glenageary, Co. Dublin
