County: Kilkenny Site name: KILKENNY: Bateman Quay (Site NOR 6)
Sites and Monuments Record No.: SMR 19:26 Licence number: 01E0555
Author: Paul Stevens, Margaret Gowen & Co. Ltd.
Site type: Quay and Inn
Period/Dating: Modern (AD 1750-AD 2000)
ITM: E 650619m, N 656198m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 52.654613, -7.251843
Assessment of a semicircular curved riverside wall and adjacent 18th-century pleasure house started in July 2001 and recommenced and concluded in July 2002 (Excavations 2001, No. 695, 01E0554, 01E0303). Work forms part of archaeological mitigation of the River Nore (Kilkenny City) Drainage Scheme. Proposed development includes removal of the riverside wall and a 6m-wide section of the right riverbank along Bateman Quay (see No. 1004, Excavations 2002).
Assessment of this site was undertaken by four test-trenches. Trenches 1 and 2 were excavated in 2001; Trenches 3 and 4 were opened by machine in 2002 and cleaned by hand, either side of the curved riverside wall. As a result of development, river levels had dropped by 1m, which enabled dry excavation of the riverside against the exterior of the wall. The aims of the assessment were to determine the date and nature of the semicircular river wall, which is situated on the possible line of the medieval riverfront town wall, and to produce a detailed record of the late 18th-/early 19th-century pleasure-house building immediately outside the development footprint.
Assessment revealed that the river wall was constructed on oak piles and abutted the pleasure house. The curved wall replaced an earlier, straight river wall, contemporary with the construction of the pleasure house. The curving wall was built to enclose a semicircular, protruding viewing platform associated with the pleasure house and dated to the late 18th or early 19th century. The pleasure house showed social division, even within a single building: an elaborate upper room, with a partially surviving ornate plaster ceiling, and a hidden utilitarian basement for servants. However, no earlier archaeological fabric was revealed in the excavation. In fact the line of the medieval riverbank appeared to be at least 7m further back from the current river’s edge and outside the development area.
The pleasure house and platform, as well as the teahouse (Site NOR 7) and jetty sites (Sites NOR 9–10) along Bateman Quay, provide a rare glimpse of middle-class Georgian urban life in Kilkenny and in Ireland. Monitoring of the proposed bulk excavation of the riverbank and the installation of sheet piling was recommended to Dúchas, to ensure that no damage is caused to the pleasure house and neighbouring teahouse. Furthermore, a conservation programme for the pleasure house was suggested to the owner of the site, Kilkenny Corporation.
2 Killiney View, Albert Road Lower, Glenageary, Co. Dublin
