2002:0578 - SMITHFIELD, Dublin, Dublin

The excavation of this 1.6ha site bounded by Smithfield, North King Street, Queen Street and Haymarket began in early March 2002. The focus of the excavation was the City Council’s development of Oxmantown Green in 1664–5 and subsequent activities across the site. The site was excavated in three phases; the final phase, at the southern end of the block, began in November and is expected to continue until March 2003.

At its Christmas assembly in 1664 the City Council decreed ‘that Oxmantown Green be taken and set by lots in fee farm, reserving a highway and large market place [with] staking out the lots to be disposed of by lottery’. The architectural historian John Summerson has identified the three-fold recipe for the successful development of an urban estate: the aristocratic lead in this case was the duke of Ormonde; the speculative developer was the city itself; but central to the concept was the successful integration of houses, church and market.

The surviving legacy of this decision is Smithfield Market. It was ‘the large market place’ mentioned in the order, and the ‘highway’ became Queen Street, named after Charles II’s wife, Catherine of Braganza. There were 96 plots, and these were acquired by their new owners, in accordance with the policy of the Council, by the drawing of lots.

The lottery was not open to all comers; most of the names on the leases were those of city aldermen and merchants, with a sprinkling of titled gentry with Dublin connections. The new development was gridded around a streetscape with names borrowed from the earl of Bedford’s successful development of Covent Garden, 30 years earlier. The 1660s houses were mostly removed after their leases expired, and limestone and brick houses with deep basements replaced them. Some of these houses, however, survived until quite recently. The glasshouse established in 1675 by John Odacio Formica remains to be found at the southern end of the site.

The development did not enjoy the success of a similar venture on St Stephen’s Green on the southern side of the river. The initial indications are that the Smithfield side of the development went downhill from the start of the 18th century, as larger urban estates were constructed to facilitate the growth of the city to the east. Significantly, Smithfield lost its anchor tenant, as Ormonde built elsewhere. As the stench from the tanneries of Watling Street wafted above that of the animals running amok in the market place, many of the more prominent locals may have decided to move on. A break in the origin and quality of the pottery recovered from the deposits at the end of the first quarter of the 18th century can be examined, with the evidence of proto-industries establishing themselves in the back yards of the Smithfield plots during the same period.

The most striking aspect of the excavation was the close spatial correlation of the plots and structures recorded with those depicted on John Rocque’s 1756 Exact Survey of the City of Dublin, following through to those on the first edition of the OS. A second important aspect is the remarkable sequence of dung-houses recorded, spanning the period from the initial development of the site in the 1660s to the introduction of a piped water supply barely a century later.

The Smithfield dung-houses were outdoor latrines, at least one of which appeared within every plot to the rear of the houses. Owing to truncation by modern deposits, none of the 30-odd dung-houses excavated was intact above the contemporaneous ground level. Enough evidence remains, however, to postulate a typology consisting of four main types. It must be noted, however, that several of the examples excavated were multi-period, and some displayed characteristics common to all four types.

Evidence of the first type consists of large holes cutting the sod and the subsoil below; some of these were as deep as 4m. Others were plank lined, and these perhaps constitute a sub-phase of the first. Dung-houses of Type I and Type I(a) contained substantial amounts of organic material that is currently undergoing analysis. They also contained a range of clay pipes and chamber pots of the period, including two almost intact examples from the Westerwald potteries. The Type I structures can be dated to the period immediately after the construction of the original houses in 1665.

Type II dung-houses were constructed mostly from the limestone cobbles that were freely available on the shoreline of the Liffey. Gaps were left in the masonry at regular intervals to facilitate the contents making their way to the subsoil. Not surprisingly, they were mostly built over the cuts associated with the earlier examples. Chamber pots recovered included examples of sgraffito from the potteries of Barnstable in North Devon. It is likely that these structures date from 1682 onwards, when water-rolled cobbles would have been available in abundance from the engineering works being undertaken along the new quays.

The Type III structures were constructed from quarried limestone and red brick. Some were built in isolation from the earlier structures; others were positioned directly over them. Seepage holes were again placed in the brickwork. Examples from Types II and III were remarkable in not containing any organic matter whatsoever, and this can be put down to the work of the city scavengers, who regularly cleaned them out. Black earthenware chamber pots were the dominant artefact recovered, but the upper deposits were composed of household rubbish dumped there after indoor facilities were introduced toward the end of the 18th century. An initial examination of the bricks used suggests that they were hand-made and irregular and would not have conformed to Imperial building standards and regulations. They are thus datable to the first decades of the 18th century. This corresponds to the period after the original leases had expired and new buildings were erected along the street frontages.

The Type IV dung-houses date from after this period and were again constructed from limestone and red brick. Three were grouped together around a small lane that appears to have been built specially to service them. The ceramic assemblage recovered suggests that there was still, however, a marked tendency accidentally to deposit chamber pots, along with their contents. Fragments of an urn commemorating the centenary of the ‘Glorious Revolution’ were among the finds from one.

The environmental evidence from the organic remains sampled from the earlier dung-houses will contribute greatly to our knowledge of the diet of the period, and sub-samples are being examined for evidence of human parasites.

Water wells on the site are typical of similar structures recorded elsewhere in the city and probably went out of use as piped water was introduced toward the middle of the 18th century. In 1741 the Piped Water Committee of the City Assembly recommended that the Liffey be tapped at Islandbridge, and Smithfield would have been one of the first beneficiaries of the new water supply. Three large cobble-lined pits appear to be cisterns that collected water for use in the small industries that developed after 1700.

The excavation produced 27 burials from the sod, which pre-dated the 1665 development. They may have come from the nearby gallows but were more likely the victims of one of the many skirmishes recorded on The Green during the 16th and 17th centuries. They were randomly buried, two to a grave, and not all were afforded a west–east interral.

A roof-tile kiln was situated at the northern end of the site, with a large cobbled pit full of wasters. It is possible that the kiln was constructed to service the extensive rebuilding that must have taken place between 1690 and 1710, as the structure does not appear on Rocque’s map.

The second phase of the excavation examined the evidence of Bective House, a large mansion constructed on the west side of Smithfield, with its plot extending back to Queen Street. Thomas Taylor, earl of Bective, was the only aristocratic resident of the western side of the square in the 18th century. He built his Richard Castle-designed mansion in 1738 at No. 33, and it has been suggested that his move to Smithfield was due to his desire to secure the best prices for the produce of his extensive farming interests. His descendants moved to a new house in Rutland Square in 1790, after which the bulk of the building was demolished. Part of the façade survived until recently on the site, and an extensive network of cellars was recorded as part of the excavation.

The third phase examined the southern end of the development, on the Haymarket frontage, where, as was the case elsewhere on the site, the second phase of building truncated the evidence of the first. Further details will be reported in 2003.

The Smithfield project has produced the largest range of post-medieval ceramics and artefacts from any site on the island. Included are several examples of almost intact Frechen jugs and a full range of both local and European types. The quality of the imports decreases dramatically from the first decades of the 18th century, as the area became less residential. An important assemblage of merchants’ tokens from the period was also recovered from the lower levels. The developers are to fund the publication of the site report, along with a fully illustrated catalogue of the finds.

2 Killiney View, Albert Road Lower, Glenageary, Co. Dublin