County: Wexford Site name: WINDMILL LANE, NEW ROSS
Sites and Monuments Record No.: SMR 29:13 Licence number: 04E1594
Author: Jo Moran, Knockrower Road, Stradbally, Co. Waterford.
Site type: Urban medieval
Period/Dating: —
ITM: E 672161m, N 627443m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 52.393768, -6.939741
Testing was carried out as part of an impact assessment on the development site between the 22 December 2004 and 18 January 2005. The site is on the east side of the town, within the defences but beyond the core of the medieval town. Nineteenth-and early 20th-century maps show the area as greenfield, until the recent housing estate was built in the 1960s.
Test-trenches on the site identified a cultivation soil under the present garden soil, which included a considerable amount of medieval pottery (Leinster cooking ware, Saintonge green-glaze and Wexford-type pottery, all dated to the 13th century). The early soil-filled cultivation furrows cut into fire-reddened clay layers, silts and pits associated with similar pottery.
Although no stake-holes or wall lines were identified and virtually no animal bone was recovered, the clay layers are probably the remains of medieval domestic buildings well outside the main built-up area of New Ross, though inside the town boundary.
