2002:1014 - KILKENNY: 71 High Street/St Kieran’s Street, Kilkenny

Planning permission was granted for the construction of apartments, a shop unit and an extension to the rear of an existing house at 71 High Street, extending onto St Kieran’s Street. Test-trenches excavated on the development site in April and September 2001 (Excavations 2001, No. 701) and in October 2002 exposed archaeological levels to a depth of 1.5m along the St Kieran’s Street front. The building proposal required the reduction of the entire area of the site on St Kieran’s Street to street level and the subsequent insertion of a raft foundation to a depth of 0.45m below street level. Excavation of the site to formation level was carried out in October 2002.

Several archaeological levels of dumped medieval and post-medieval material were exposed. A large quantity of ceramic material was recovered from these levels, as well as animal bone waste, metal slag, and clay pipes and stems. The features exposed were all post-medieval. A drystone well, with an internal diameter of 1m, had been cut from the medieval horizons into the underlying natural clays. A short section of a mortared brick-and-stone drain with a slate base was exposed close to the well. A section of mortared wall, three courses high, was exposed to the east of the drain. This wall and an associated area of cobbling had been truncated by the insertion of a modern drain.

The site followed a natural slope down from High Street to St Kieran’s Street. The natural slope of the ground surface down toward the river may have been deliberately raised over time by the dumping of waste material to the rear of medieval burgage plots on High Street. Laminated spreads of medieval soils, present to the lowest level of the excavation, suggest that medieval waste was being dumped in this area over an extended period of time.

AE House, Monahan Road, Cork