2001:979 - KELLS: Canon Street, Meath

An assessment was required in advance of a grant of planning permission for an extension (c. 10m2) to the rear of two adjoining dwellings and business premises. The site, which is located in the south-western corner of the medieval walled town, consists of two adjoining buildings, with rear extensions and an amalgamated back garden (12m x 10m). The buildings front onto Canon Street, which was one of the major streets of the medieval walled town. The line of the town wall marks the rear of the property and consists of a 2m drop down to the field below, which is faced with modern breezeblocks and cemented stones. The adjoining field is low-lying and poorly drained. The western boundary consists of a timber fence, also roughly along the line of the town wall. The precinct wall of the old bridewell marks the eastern boundary of the site.

Two test-trenches were excavated across the extent of the building footprint and associated services. The modern topsoil (0.3m thick) covered a beige yellow clay and mortar layer (0.1–0.25m thick) that represents a demolition layer associated with the present houses. It contained late 18th/early 19th-century pottery, including pearlware with a feather-decorated blue border. The original topsoil layer (0.4–0.45m thick), which lay beneath it, was a dark beige silty clay with a slight charcoal content. Subsoil was a beige marl with a high gravel content, reached between 0.5m to 1m below the present ground surface.

A flat-bottomed pit was exposed in section along the western property boundary. It was cut from the top of the mortar-rich layer and through the original topsoil. Its black, charcoal-rich fill included a 19th-century pottery assemblage of brown ware, cream-coloured earthenware, and blue and white transfer print pottery with the beehive logo of the Burgess and Leigh factory, Burslem, Staffordshire, which began manufacturing c. 1862.

There was no evidence for the town wall on the western side of the property indicating that it must be located in the adjoining property to the south. The absence of medieval structures may be due to several factors. The location of the planned extension midway down the garden was beyond the extent of any medieval and early modern building. The 1663 Valuation of Kells indicates that houses on Canon Street were 20 feet wide, which is slightly narrower than the existing ones. This portion of Canon Street also lies in the corner of the town and may have been garden or open ground left undeveloped until the 18th–19th centuries. The 1663 Valuation of Kells recorded only eleven properties on the south side of Canon Street, while an estate map of 1817 records 29 properties, which had multiplied further by 1839 (first edition OS six-inch map).

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