2002:0371 - YOUGHAL: Hill Cottage, Gaol Steps, Cork

An assessment of a proposal to develop a driveway through a pre-existing break in the town wall of Youghal for Hill Cottage was carried out. The property is an early 19th-century residence immediately within the south-west corner of the medieval walled area, on the high hillside that dominates the townscape.

Youghal may have originated as a Hiberno-Norse port that developed from a 9th-century longphort (Orme 1966). However, the earliest archaeological evidence, in the form of the town defences, dates from the 13th century. Much of the landward run of the town wall survives; the seaward wall has largely disappeared. Thirteen circular towers on the town wall are illustrated on the ‘Pacata Hibernia’ map of 1587. Today the remains of six towers are visible on the extant sections of the town walls (Zajac et al. 1995). A flat-bottomed fosse c. 14.4m wide and 2.8m deep lies along the external face of the wall as it extends along the western limits of the town. This may also have continued around the north-west angle and followed the line of the north wall, where today a substantial regular depression exists (Zajac et al. 1995). The extramural fosse has been maintained largely intact until recent times, although the depth varies owing to haphazard infilling.

The extant run of the town wall bounds Hill Cottage to the west and south, with a mural tower, known as the Banshee Tower, dominating the south-west corner of the site. The core of the medieval town is downslope to the east, c. 35m below. Beyond the town wall is a wide extramural fosse. The walled area of the town is large, a development dictated by the defensive need to wall the top of the ridge. The area of settlement is smaller and developed on the flatter ground at the foot of the hill (Orme 1966).

A break was made in the original line of the town wall to the north of the Banshee Tower in the early 19th century to facilitate the construction of Hill Cottage. The line of this stretch of wall was subsequently reinstated with a less substantial wall with opes. It is through an opening in this wall that the driveway is proposed. The topsoil inside the wall of the garden of Hill Cottage had been removed before testing, as had some of the external topsoil in the ditch.

Trench 1 was outside the 19th-century wall, in the extramural ditch. It was 4.5m long, 1.5m wide and 1.2m deep. It took advantage of a section created during the initial site preparation work and followed it down to evaluate the nature of the sediments outside the wall. The wall truncated several of the sediments uncovered in this trench. The first sediment removed was a dark brown, silty clay topsoil, to a maximum depth of 0.5m. It contained occasional small and medium-sized stones, occasional sherds of 19th- and 20th-century creamware and of modern white earthenware, and occasional brick fragments of varying quality. The second sediment was compact, red/mid-brown, sandy, silty clay that again produced small and medium-sized angular sandstone and 18th-century local earthenware and brick. This sediment appeared to be a fill layer of the extramural ditch and was truncated in the east by the construction of the 19th-century wall. The third sediment, uncovered at 1m deep (41.21m OD), was a looser, pink/red/mid-brown shale and sandy clay. This layer was also a fill of the extramural ditch and was truncated in the east by the 19th-century wall. It produced several sherds of possibly locally produced earthenware. One of these ceramics was a rimsherd of a slipware plate, possibly of late 17th- or early 18th-century date. The decoration is of two concentric rings of white slip dots on the body fabric. Excavation ceased at this depth because it was beyond the formation level of the driveway.

Trench 2 was a small hand-dug test-trench inside the garden of Hill Cottage. It was positioned in an area that would have picked up any remaining parts of town wall foundation as it passed through the garden of Hill Cottage. The modified north side of the Banshee Tower in the south-west of the garden has a projecting stone footing that may be evidence of the line on which the original town wall met the tower. Trench 2 again took advantage of a partially created section face. It was 1m long, 1m wide and 0.7m deep. The top sediment was 0.2m of bedding for patio slabs. Beneath this was 0.1m of dark brown garden silt. Beneath this was 0.3m of light brown, silty clay, which contained occasional small stones and charcoal flecking. This sediment was a deliberate levelling layer introduced as part of the terraced garden that was to the west of, and at a higher level than, the cottage. A rubble layer of 0.2m was beneath, which sat on natural, a compact, heavy, pink/brown, clayey shale at a depth of 0.7m (39.85m OD). This trench did not produce evidence of surviving foundation courses of the town wall; the sediments uncovered were produced as a result of the 19th-century construction and landscaping associated with Hill Cottage.

The original line of the town wall would have passed through what is now the garden of Hill Cottage, close to the line of the present western boundary, linking the surviving fabric and the Banshee Tower in the south-east corner of the property. The area immediately inside the town wall is unlikely to have had any permanent or substantial structures, owing to the steep gradient of the original ground level, which would have fallen away sharply from the inside of the wall. The cartographic and illustrative evidence shows that this area and that along the inside of the western run of the town wall were maintained as gardens and woodland up until at least the late 18th century. The late 18th and early 19th century saw substantial development of Youghal as a result of increased economic prosperity. Part of this development was the expansion of housing onto the hillside inside the town wall, through the use of terracing. This new construction took place largely in a westward direction into the hillside from Ashe Street, which runs parallel to, and to the west of, North Main Street.

The strip of ground between Ashe Street and the town wall, at the top of which is Hill Cottage, was developed from both the top and the bottom of the slope. Hill Cottage was built on the western side of this strip, with part of the town wall being removed to allow access and terracing of the hillside. The test-trenches showed that the construction of Hill Cottage removed the line of town wall from the existing fabric to the Banshee Tower; and the wall that was built to reinstate this line truncated the fills of the extramural ditch. Once the house had been constructed, the ground above it to the west that originally sloped downhill was terraced, cutting into the natural slope of the hillside and removing any surviving wall fabric. The findings of Trench 2 substantiate this.

References
Orme, A.R. 1966 Youghal, County Cork: growth, decay, resurgence. Irish Geography 5, 121–49.
Zajac, S. et al. 1995 Urban Archaeological Survey: County Cork (2 vols), Unpublished, Office of Public Works.

Ringwood, Summerfield, Youghal, Co. Cork