County: Waterford Site name: DUNGARVAN: Jacknell Street and Emmet Street
Sites and Monuments Record No.: WA031-040---- Licence number: 03E0889
Author: John Tierney, Eachtra Archaeological Projects
Site type: Pit and Town defences
Period/Dating: Multi-period
ITM: E 625994m, N 592941m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 52.087784, -7.620684
Monitoring for the Dungarvan sewerage scheme began in June 2003. Jacknell Street and Emmet Street in Dungarvan town and Sarsfield Street in Abbeyside, a suburb to the east of Dungarvan, have been monitored. Two main areas have been hand excavated, including a series of medieval pits in Jacknell Street and what is possibly a ditch outside the town wall on Emmet Street at the top of Augustine Street.
Nine features excavated on Jacknell Street yielded 14th- to 17th-century ceramics, animal bone, charcoal, seashell and molluscs. These pits and features are the remains of activity outside the line of the town wall.
The probable ditch at the top of Augustine Street was up to 2m in depth (1m was hand excavated, the remainder excavated by machine), 30m in length and extended the width of the trench (c. 1.2m). The probable ditch contained imported late 17th-century North Devon gravel-tempered ware and early 18th-century ceramics (Claire McCutcheon, pers. comm.). On previous phases of the sewerage scheme, Pollock (2001, 4) and Power (1995, 183) uncovered what they thought was the town ditch. Some other miscellaneous features, such as stone drains and isolated layers, were also recorded along the extent of Jacknell Street and Emmet Street.
Nothing of archaeological significance was observed during the monitoring of trenches in Abbeyside.
The archaeology uncovered is significant. None of Dungarvan town wall survives above ground and little, except for its route, is known about the wall or associated archaeology. The ditch outside the town wall was previously only excavated in two small trenches (Pollock and Power, op. cit.) and was mainly a hypothesis, though some antiquarian accounts do imply the presence of a ditch.
References
Pollock, D. 2001 Archaeological monitoring of trial trenching for the Dungarvan and environs sewerage scheme, licence 00E0576. Unpublished Archaeografix report.
Power, C. 1995 Excavations in Dungarvan: a medieval town wall? Tipperary Historical Journal, 183–8.
Ballycurreen Industrial Estate, Kinsale Road Cork
