2003:2326 - TRALEE: Abbey Court, Kerry

Monitoring was undertaken associated with renovations to a property located at Abbey Court in Tralee. The property, formerly Tesco’s, is within the zone of archaeological potential for Tralee, specifically between the site of the medieval Dominican friary and the Great Castle of Tralee. This is the second season of work at the site. The previous work revealed the relict remains of a 19th-century tannery (Excavations 2002, No. 835).

This season’s monitoring was undertaken abutting the eastern limits of the site and was related to the construction of a services trench. Three walls were recorded in the trench. Two of the walls were of 19th-century vintage, are represented in the 1878 Denny estate survey map and relate to the construction in 1826–9 of the coachhouses at the rear of Georgian Denny Street.

The third wall section was of medieval date and consisted of a roughly hewn limestone wall bonded with a lime mortar with a coarse gravel inclusion. The exposed section measured 8m in length and 1.17m in width and was aligned north-northeast/ south-south-west. Cleaning the exposed section revealed an inner core of well-placed, angular, split limestone. The outer faces are constructed of larger, well-selected, more squared limestone. No dressed stones were revealed. The wall was preserved in situ and was only revealed to a depth of 0.4m. The trench was widened to accommodate the services. This trench-widening revealed a nice section of medieval limestone cobbling beneath a layer of 19th-century sandstone beach cobbling. The medieval cobbling was also preserved in situ.

The morphology of the wall, combined with the cartographic evidence and the current extant street/housing layout, indicates that this wall is the remains of the bawn wall of the Great Castle of Tralee and is the first section of medieval castle walling archaeologically recorded for Tralee.

3 Canal Place, Tralee, Co. Kerry