County: Tipperary Site name: CASHEL
Sites and Monuments Record No.: N/A Licence number: 02E1324 ext.
Author: John Purcell
Site type: Historic town
Period/Dating: Multi-period
ITM: E 607623m, N 640604m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 52.516757, -7.887675
As part of the development of a new credit-union building on Main Street, Cashel, testing was required. Dominic Delany undertook the testing, and John Purcell carried out the subsequent excavation of the site. A series of linear features (F1, F5 and F10) was excavated; these deposits were in the back garden of an early 19th-century house. The upper layer of the features was identified as the possible medieval deposits uncovered during the testing. The possible hearth feature was identified as a layer of crushed red brick (F3) and an area of burning (C20). The features were concentrated in the north-east of the site, at 105.2–105.7m OD. The remaining areas of the site contained a number of modern deposits overlying the natural soil.
F3 and F10 appeared to be the earliest features on the site. F10 was a linear feature oriented north-east/south-west. It was cut on the west by F5 and extended into the baulk at the east. F3 was also cut by F5 on the east; this feature had a shallow cut filled with broken brick and occasional sherds of medieval pottery. F5 had a dark silty fill similar to that of the linear features F1 and F6.
F1 and F6 may have been used as drains; they were regular in profile and contained layers of silt at the base. These features were situated in what had been the back yard of the 18th-/19th-century house, the rear wall of which was still visible as F9. F9 appeared to be earlier than F4, another stone-and-mortar structure, possibly an outhouse of F9, which was built in what would have been its back yard. A number of features pre-dated these walls, F8, F1 and F6, which were all disturbed during the construction of the walls.
All of the excavated features had remnants of early medieval pottery, worked animal bone and brick. The large quantity of medieval pottery in these 19th-century features may indicate the former presence of medieval layers on the site that were destroyed as part of the building of the structures on the site or during the excavation of the features discussed above.
4 Lincoln Place, Grattan Hill, Cork
