County: Tipperary Site name: GOLDEN: Main Street
Sites and Monuments Record No.: SMR 60:96 Licence number: 01E0119
Author: Jo Moran
Site type: Historic town
Period/Dating: Multi-period
ITM: E 601235m, N 638509m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 52.497982, -7.981808
A six-week excavation was carried out on behalf of Tipperary SR County Council at the site of their housing scheme at Main Street, Golden. The site lies close to the bridge over the River Suir and to the castle, a late 15th/16th-century tower-house built on an island.
In March/April a large trench was opened beside Main Street, close to the bridge, ahead of the construction of further houses. The site had been assessed in 1997, and service trenching monitored in 1998. Masonry was identified as the fabric of the late 17th- or 18th-century ‘clubhouse’, and this overlay industrial activity and earlier walls at the riverside, associated with medieval pottery.
J.D. White, writing in 1892, refers to a building on the site used both as ‘a Clubhouse and a dwelling dating possibly to the 17thC but no later than the early years of the 18thC’ (White 1892, 53).
The 2001 excavations revealed the plan of the clubhouse, a rectangular mortared stone building alongside the street with a slipway to the rear, sloping down to the river. Outbuildings and cobbled yards were found further back.
The clubhouse had several wooden-floored rooms and at least one fireplace built into the rear wall (and apparently none in the gables). An extension towards the river reused the site of an earlier building with clay-bonded stone walls. Pottery dating from the 17th and 18th centuries was found associated with these buildings.
The walls of the buildings on the street front were not removed, but excavation through the floors uncovered hearths and paved and metalled surfaces associated with a late medieval workshop or smithy.
Limited excavation through the slipway uncovered clay-bonded walls and a metalled surface associated with 13th/14th-century pottery. These deposits indicate occupation at the river crossing pre-dating the late medieval castle in the river.
Full excavation was not carried out as the proposed council houses were relocated.
Reference
White, J.D. 1892 Anthologia Tipperariensis. Cashel.
Knockrower Road, Stradbally, Co. Waterford
