County: Cork Site name: KINSALE DRAINAGE SCHEME
Sites and Monuments Record No.: CO112-034001 Licence number: 04E1433
Author: Tony Cummins, for Aegis Archaeology Ltd.
Site type: Historic town
Period/Dating: Multi-period
ITM: E 563768m, N 550445m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 51.705219, -8.524224
Monitoring of a drainage scheme took place in the Glen/Emmet Place/Pearse Street area of Kinsale town at the end of 2004. This phase of the scheme is located outside the area of the walled town in an area that formed part of the harbour during the medieval period. A significant aspect of the physical development of Kinsale during the post-medieval and modern periods involved various reclamation works carried out along the harbour waterfront. Pearse Street was filled in at the end of the 18th century, while Emmet Place and Market Quay were reclaimed during the 19th century.
The uppermost stratigraphical layer recorded in the areas monitored to date comprised a stony makeup material located immediately below the road surface. This layer measured up to 0.5m in depth and has been extensively disturbed by 20th-century service trenches. This layer overlay a shale-rich infill material deposited during 18th/19th-century land reclamation works. This reclamation layer measured up to 2m in depth and was relatively sterile, although it did contain occasional sherds of post-medieval pottery and brick fragments. The reclamation layer was found to overlie the waterlogged dark-grey estuarine clay layer, which is located at an average depth of 2.5m below modern ground level. The route of the pipeline trench along Pearse Street had been previously disturbed by a 19th-century stone-lined culvert, which was cut into the land reclamation material.
Nothing of archaeological significance was uncovered during monitoring of this drainage scheme during 2004 and this project will continue in the Pearse Street and Glen areas during 2005.
16 Avondale Court, Corbally, Limerick
