2002:1813 - WATERFORD: Lady Lane, Waterford

The site is on the north side of Lady Lane, on the line of the intramural city wall separating the Hiberno-Norse town from the walled Anglo-Norman suburb. Excavation took place in 2000 (Excavations 2000, No. 1006) and 2001 (Excavations 2001, No. 1254). The background and history of the site have been outlined in these reports. In 2002 construction work began on the new City Library in the open site west of the wall and within the standing library building to the east.

Further excavation in the area of Our Lady’s Gate exposed a full quadrant of the gate-tower set in a trench dug through the earlier bank. A stretch of city wall was uncovered, 1m inside the tower to the east, within the standing library building. This wall was 2m wide and 3m long. It was of similar construction to the gate-tower, comprising roughly dressed blocks of limestone and shale bonded with a cream sandy mortar.

No datable finds were recovered from these features, and the junction between the tower and the wall did not survive. In the early 20th century the west wall of the library was built between them, cutting away the western edge of the city wall and the eastern section of the gate-tower. It was therefore impossible to establish a sequence of construction for these features. The similarity in their fabric, however, suggests that they are broadly contemporaneous, probably dating to the 13th century, when the first reference is made to gates along this stretch of wall (Nicholls 1972, 109).

Monitoring of drainage work to the south of the site in Lady Lane revealed the surviving remains of the basal levels of the city wall and what may be part of the foundations of the gate-tower. The drainage trench was re-routed to avoid these features.

Two further trenches were opened 22m north-east of the tower, at the rear of the standing library building. Each of these was 2m square. One was just inside the line of the intramural wall, and the other was c. 10m farther east, at the frontage with Bakehouse Lane. Both trenches contained layers of oxidised clay and ash and what appeared to be the remains of kilns. The feature by the city wall was probably a keyhole-shaped kiln, and that fronting onto Bakehouse Lane resembled a 13th-century comma-shaped kiln found during earlier excavations at Peter Street (Hurley and Scully 1997, 276). Below the first kiln, inside the line of the wall, there was a deposit of buff clay that may have formed part of a collapsed/demolished defensive bank. Work on this site continued into spring 2003 and will be reported on in more detail in 2003.

References
Hurley, M. and Scully, O.M.B. 1997 Late Viking Age and medieval Waterford: excavations 1986–1992. Waterford.
Nicholls, K. 1972 Inquisitions of 1224 from the miscellanea of the exchequer. Analecta Hibernica 27, 103–12.

The Mile Post, Waterford