2003:0237 - CORK: City Courthouse, Washington Street, Cork

Excavation in the basement and ground floor of the Cork City and County Courthouse on Washington Street commenced in May 2003. As this building is within the zone of archaeological potential for Cork city, it was deemed necessary to monitor all groundwork during the internal refurbishment. Initially concrete slabs were removed by mechanical excavator from all 32 ground-floor rooms. In the majority of these rooms the full depth of excavation/clearance did not exceed 0.6m below existing ground level. Two lift-shafts were to be built in the centre of the building. Pits for these shafts were excavated to 1.5–1.85m below present ground level. The most significant area of excavation was in the centre of the building, where a new basement corridor (the prisoners’ tunnel) was excavated. Excavation of the tunnel was a complicated process due to safety requirements surrounding the standing walls of the building, which needed underpinning.

Most of the medieval stratigraphy had been disturbed by the construction of the 19th-century Courthouse foundations. The Courthouse was originally constructed in 1835, to the design of the Pain brothers. Their building was badly damaged by fire in 1891 and was subsequently reconstructed. Retaining only the interior façades, the structure was completely remodelled internally. The original building had two semicircular courtrooms and the foundations of these were clearly apparent beneath the contemporary floor levels.

In the lift-shaft pits and tunnel, the existing walls were underpinned. This involved the phased removal of sections of the ground beneath existing walls and its replacement with concrete. The stone foundations, steel girders and wooden piles supporting the existing walls had virtually destroyed all remnants of the medieval strata. Consequently, the monitoring contributed little to our knowledge of the medieval city.

City Hall, Cork