County: Dublin Site name: DUBLIN: 1–2 Exchange Street
Sites and Monuments Record No.: N/A Licence number: 01E1161
Author: Margaret Gowen with Kevin Weldon, Margaret Gowen & Co. Ltd.
Site type: Historic town
Period/Dating: Multi-period
ITM: E 715390m, N 734067m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 53.344234, -6.267082
Monitoring was carried out over three days in December 2001 during construction of a new office building at 1–2 Exchange Street Upper, Dublin 2. All substructure works, including the piling operation and the insertion of ground beams, were monitored. These had been designed to lie above the archaeological horizon, thus reducing the impact on archaeological deposits, the levels of which had been recorded in test excavation. The piling design and structural design of the building were devised to minimise impact, and the number of piles was kept to a minimum to limit the impact. The site is located within the north-east corner of the Viking walled town.
Previous excavations further north at 33–34 Parliament Street located the remains of a sequence of 10th/11th-century earthen flood banks, which were subsequently replaced by a stone wall c. 1100. Evidence of an unusual clay platform was also found at the Exchange Street
Upper side of the site.
Testing had established the presence of well-preserved deposits extending over the entire site lying below c. 0.3m, below an existing concrete basement floor. The design of the new scheme sought to keep all formation levels above archaeological deposits and to use the concrete floor as a load-bearing working surface for the piling rig and the mini-digger used for excavation to ground-beam formation level. The beam trenches were accurately cut through the concrete, thereby avoiding any collateral disturbance.
Demolition and site clearance work revealed the presence of an unbasemented area, leaving a deposit sequence (a ‘high spot’) of surviving archaeology in the south-west corner of the site, measuring roughly 9m east–west by 3m, along the street frontage. The design of the basement of the new building was adjusted to leave all but the northern edge of this ‘high spot’ in situ. The location of one crucial ground beam adjacent to it at basement level, however, resulted in a need to trim back its northern edge. This process effectively cleaned up the section, and a sequence of deposits 1.4m deep was exposed, overlain by loose 18th-century rubble which had to be graded back for safety purposes. This section was recorded in detail prior to the construction of a retaining wall which now effectively serves to protect the remaining ‘block’ of deposits. The section revealed deposits that were organic in nature and contained the remains of clay and stone-lined hearths, as well as some post-and-wattle fences.
Properties excavated in 33–34 Parliament Street indicated an east–west alignment and the entrances of several houses extending under Exchange Street Upper were exposed on that site. The presence of hearths in association with clay and overlying organic layers in the exposed section on this site can be interpreted as the remains of at least two houses.
The piling operation indicated that the archaeological deposits only extended a further 0.4m below the exposed section, indicating a sharp rise in original topography beneath this southern part of Exchange Street Upper. It also indicates that the deposits revealed can probably be dated to the 10th and 11th centuries.
There were no finds apart from some animal bone and shell.
2 Killiney View, Albert Road Lower, Glenageary, Co. Dublin
