2001:681 - CALLAN: West Street, Kilkenny

In October the site of a derelict building beside West Street was excavated. Testing and monitoring by Jo Moran on the site since 1999 had found indications of an earlier building over ditches (Excavations 1999, No. 428; Excavations 2000, No. 519).

The derelict building was probably erected in the early 19th century, and replaced a wooden workshop or smithy with a clay floor, probably erected in the 18th century. There was no indication of an earlier building on site, in spite of the plot being 400m inside the 17th-century (and medieval?) town gate. A mortared stone wall under the workshop floor appears to have been a free-standing roadside boundary, built of reused stone from elsewhere and assembled in the 17th or early 18th century. The wall replaced a ditch separating the wide road from a field on the hillside above.

Knockrower Road, Stradbally, Co. Waterford