2002:1936 - WEXFORD: 117 Main Street South, Wexford

An assessment of a proposed commercial/residential development at 117 South Main Street, Wexford, was requested by Wexford Town Council. The development was at the east side of South Main Street, 60m inside the medieval town walls. The site of the 12th-century Norman castle, itself possibly constructed on a Viking structure, lay c. 100m south of the proposed development site. Colfer (1990–1) reconstructed the extent of the estuarine shoreline in the Viking Age and much of the medieval period. The development site lay at the original water’s edge, where the Bishopswater stream and the estuary met to form a deep-water pool that became the focus of the Norse settlement at Wexford. Colfer demonstrated that most of the ground to the east of South Main Street was being reclaimed from an early date in the history of the town, and the midden and dumped rubble material that was deposited to reclaim this ground has been found during various excavations in the east of the town. The reclamation process was not always successful: in 1325 six burgage plots were submerged by the sea, and in 1395 there are further records of waterlogged land near the shoreline. Eventually around one-third of the town was built on reclaimed land.

Testing by Jo Moran at 112 South Main Street, 40m north-west of the site, revealed a band of organic midden material (20–50mm deep) underlying thick rubble layers and overlying estuarine silt that contained a plank and stakes of probable medieval date (Excavations 1996, No. 406, 96E0141). The stakes were probably used as piling to stabilise the ground. Similar stratigraphy was encountered by Paul Stevens at the Bullring and at Custom House Quay/Common Quay Street, 300m north of the development site. Here the medieval midden was absent, but thick rubble reclamation deposits were noted (Excavations 2000, No. 1072). During monitoring of the Wexford Main Drainage Scheme by Joanna Wren, reclamation deposits were encountered from Main Street to the modern quay (Excavations 1995, No. 287, 93E0190). In Mary Street, during the same project, the remains of a substantial ditch running north–south were found c. 20m inside the town wall. These were interpreted as the pre-Norman urban defences mentioned by Giraldus Cambrensis in his account of the taking of Wexford by the Anglo-Normans. Testing by Martin Byrne at 20–22 King Street Upper, 150m south-west of the development site, revealed nothing of archaeological significance (Excavations 1998, No. 680, 98E0419).

Three test-trenches were excavated by hand in the development area. The stratigraphic sequence in the trenches was broadly similar. Deposits of red-brick rubble with a terminus post quem in the early 18th century overlay a dark silt layer of probable medieval date. This date is based on one sherd of local medieval pottery and is therefore not definite. The deposit is likely to extend throughout the eastern part of the site and is interpreted as a buried intertidal midden that was probably dumped for the purpose of reclamation. Very similar stratigraphy has been found in other excavations in the east of the town, i.e. a medieval midden deposit overlying estuarine silt and underlying substantial post-medieval rubble deposits (see above). These deposits were part of a process of land reclamation in the eastern one-third of the town, a process that was taking place from an early period in the history of the town.

Reference
Colfer, B. 1990–1 Medieval Wexford. Journal of the Wexford Historical Society 13, 5–29.

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