2004:1538 - RIVERSTOWN: First Coopershill House, Sligo

In June and July 2004 excavations were conducted inside the remains of Tanzyfort House, the first house occupied by the Coopers of Coopershill Demesne, Riverstown, Co. Sligo. The excavation was sponsored by the Centre for the Study of Rural Ireland at Illinois State University and constituted the second season of work at the site. This season continued the programme of historical research combined with excavation. Archival research in the family papers curated at Coopershill House (c. 1774-present) indicated that the Cooper family did not move from Tanzyfort House to Coopershill House until May 1781. Since the original deed to the property dates to 1684, the historical dates of Tanzyfort House are thus established as c. 1685–1781. Tanzyfort was a stone-built, L-shaped two-and-a-half-storey house.

The plan of the 2004 excavation was to continue the fieldwork begun in 2003. Most of the excavation units were placed west of the house that year, in what was judged to have been the front yard. The side of the house situated towards the yard would have faced the original road to Sligo. Minimal excavation inside the ruined walls of the house in 2003 (Excavations 2003, No. 1670) suggested the presence of two ground-floor rooms: a 'main hall' running north-south (with a flagstone floor) and an attached 'kitchen' running east-west (with a cobblestone floor). The 2004 excavations were all conducted inside the house limits, with several goals in mind: to expose the extent of both kinds of flooring, to reveal any interior walls or partitions, to discover the effects of the construction of the kennel in the late 18th century and to obtain a more complete collection of artefacts associated with daily life at Tanzyfort House. The collection of artefacts from the house is consistent with the overall research design pursued since 1994, because these materials can be compared with other archaeological collections from non-élite farmers in the region.

Initial excavations within the 'main hall' provided little concrete information. Soil deposits that could be associated with human activities were shallow in this part of the house and suggested either that the construction of the kennel (c. 1780–90) had destroyed the cultural deposits or that the original floor surface was near the present-day ground surface. Excavation revealed no additional in situ evidence of the flagstone floor in the 'main hall'.

Excavations in the 'kitchen' were much more revealing. The cobblestone flooring was removed in 1m by 1m units and excavated underneath. This revealed a deposit of c. 0.1–0.15m of loamy soil followed by a deep fill zone composed of construction rubble and artefacts. The soil in the debris was apparently taken from the front yard and thus its removal accounts for the large depression encountered in this area in 2003.

The cellar was c. 1.5m deep. Its walls consisted of stones of varying sizes laid with mortar and covered with lime plaster. The floor of the cellar was a hard-packed clay, about 0.05m thick, underlain by naturally occurring glacial till. The cellar's builders had bisected it with a second stone wall, 0.75–0.8m wide, running east-west. This second wall created two roughly equal-sized rooms inside the cellar (2.56m and 2.6m wide). The west wall of the cellar (running north-south) exhibited only one clean face (facing eastward), suggesting that the wall had been built into a revetment. Excavation could not reveal whether the original builders had constructed the cellar within a natural depression or whether they had dug out the cellar hole. In any case, the cobble over it was clearly associated with the kennel rather than with the original habitation of Tanzyfort House, as first supposed. The Coopers probably ordered the laying of the cobble when the kennel was constructed.

Well over half of the 4354 artefacts collected in 2004 derived from the rubble layer. This collection, with the exception of a few 19th-century intrusions, contains all 18th-century artefacts, including tin-glazed earthenware, creamware, pearlware, stoneware, olive-green glass, and hand-wrought iron nails. In addition to personal items, the cellar deposit also contained sandstone roofing slates (averaging about 15mm thick) and decorative plaster elements from the room treatments. These materials were apparently deposited during the deliberate destruction of the house in the early 1780s.

Illinois, USA