2004:0201 - BANDON: 'The Shambles', Cork

Two test-trenches were opened inside a 19th-century meat shambles building located on the north side of Bandon town prior to the proposed construction of a number of residential units within the site. The fifteen-sided meat shambles was built in 1817 and was designed as a major meat retail centre. It consisted of 22 stalls surrounding a central slaughterhouse and the proposed development plan includes the retention of all the surviving shambles walls. The meat shambles was constructed along the possible line of the northern line of Bandon town wall. There are no extant remains of the town wall in the immediate vicinity of the development site and the trenches were excavated in order to ascertain if subsurface remains of the wall were present.

The stratigraphy encountered consisted of a very loose, dark-greyish-brown soil which measured up to 0.9m in depth. This soil contained many small stones and loose lime mortar and also contained rubbish material such as occasional butchered animal bone and plastic bags. The ground level in this area of Bandon slopes downwards from north to south and this soil appeared to have been deposited in order to create a level ground surface within the shambles walls. This soil layer overlay a dark-yellowishbrown, silty clay natural subsoil, which was found to be disturbed by a 19th-century stone-lined drain in one of the trenches. There were no traces of the town wall, or any other archaeological features or finds, recorded at this site.

AE House, Monahan Road, Cork