County: Wexford Site name: WEXFORD: Stonebridge Lane, Main Street South
Sites and Monuments Record No.: N/A Licence number: 02E0205
Author: Emmet Stafford, Stafford McLoughlin Archaeology
Site type: Structure
Period/Dating: Undetermined
ITM: E 704928m, N 621667m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 52.336569, -6.460272
Test excavation as part of a pre-planning assessment took place at Stonebridge Lane in March 2002. Three trenches, all oriented north–south and 1.4m wide, were excavated by machine. The site is within the zone of urban archaeological potential of Wexford, immediately inside the line of the surviving town walls.
Trench 1, roughly parallel to the western boundary of the site, was 6.2m long and 2.28m in maximum depth. Trench 2, parallel to the western boundary of the site, was 8m long and 2.18m in maximum depth. Trench 3, excavated within a shed at the south-eastern corner of the site, was 4m long and 1.3m in maximum depth.
The excavation revealed a depth of post-medieval stratigraphy exceeding 2m throughout the site. The material recovered suggests that the site originally lay within an estuarine area and is unlikely to have been used as a settlement site during the early medieval period. Dark, waterlogged, silty clays rich in organic material were uncovered at 0.8–1.3m below present ground level in all trenches. This material extended beyond the reach of the excavator, at 2.8m. Post-medieval reclamation layers, garden soils and modern rubble overlay the organic silts in all trenches.
A wall, uncovered at 1.8m below present ground level at the northern end of Trench 1, was situated within the estuarine silts. The date and function of this feature are unclear.
Unit 4, Enniscorthy Enterprise Centre, Milehouse Road, Enniscorthy, Co. Wexford
