County: Wexford Site name: WEXFORD: 1a Main Street North
Sites and Monuments Record No.: N/A Licence number: 01E0074
Author: Michael Tierney and William O. Frazer for Eachtra Archaeological Projects
Site type: Historic town
Period/Dating: Multi-period
ITM: E 704727m, N 621850m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 52.338253, -6.463160
Monitoring took place of ground works associated with the renovation of the building and its conversion from newspaper offices to a hairdressing salon. Work on site had commenced when the archaeologist was contacted, with trial-holes already cut and most of the internal ‘strip-out’ of the existing structure complete. Monitoring took place during the clearance of the existing concrete ground-floor slab (manually and with pneumatic drills) in the south-west of the site. The manual excavation of foundation trenches for reinforced concrete, for steel columns set in reinforced concrete, and for a drainage/sewerage pipe was also monitored. Trenching reached a depth of 0.6m in all cases, extending well into the natural subsoil across the site.
The stratigraphy of the site was simple and consistent, with a heterogeneous layer of post-medieval/modern demolition debris directly over the natural clay subsoil or the bedrock, with no intervening archaeological deposits. Cut features were limited to drainage trenches and foundation trenches for the main wall footings of the extant structure. None are likely to date from before the second half of the 17th century.
No artefactual evidence of medieval date or earlier was recovered. Apart from brick and drainpipe fragments, finds consisted of a sparse assortment of 19th–20th-century earthenwares; a single sherd of a 19th-century transfer-printed ware plate (‘willow pattern’); a few fragments of modern (probably 19th- and 20th-century) green and brown bottle glass; and clear window glass fragments of indeterminate age. Also present were an assortment of iron nails, all wire-made (and therefore 19th- or 20th-century) except two square-sectioned hand-made examples and one example that remains unidentified (owing to corrosion). In addition, potentially archaeologically significant (brick) portions of the multi-phased extant standing structure were recorded, although none are likely to date from earlier than the later 17th century.
No medieval remains were found despite the fact that the site is located within the boundaries of the 12th-century Norse settlement (Colfer 1990–1; Culleton 1992–3). It is likely that any such remains would have been removed during the construction of the existing building at the site.
References
Colfer, B. 1990–1 Medieval Wexford. Journal of the Wexford Historical Society 3, 5–29.
Culleton, E. 1992–3 The rise and fall of Norse Wexford. Journal of the Wexford Historical Society 4, 50–61.
River Oaks, Riverstown, Birr, Co. Offaly
