2005:232 - CORK: 4–5 Wandesford Street, Cork

This building is located in the heart of Cork city and is the most southerly on Wandesford Street, adjacent to the listed Clarke’s Bridge. The prospective developer intends to replace the existing building, last used as a commercial premises, with a five-storey office building. Wandesford Street lies near the town wall, between it and the south channel of the Lee, which formed the outer element of the town’s defences in medieval times. Following consultation with the city archaeologist, the developer commissioned an assessment of the site, including test excavation. Works were carried out on 9 June 2005. Following the removal of the concrete floor, two test-trenches were excavated, each running with its long axis aligned east–west. Trench 1 was positioned next to the northern wall of the premises; Trench 2 was adjacent to the southern wall.

The eastern end of Trench 1 was taken up with two late 20th-century features, one a concrete pad built to support a weight-bearing pillar, the other part of a box-shaped hollow concrete structure sunk into the ground. The interior of the latter was filled with modern rubble consisting for the most part of concrete and red brick. The rest of the trench had an upper level of similar modern material, 0.3m thick. Below this lay a layer of black, ashy organic soil mixed with red-brick fragments, 0.25m thick. Below this was a thin layer, 0.1m thick, of mixed green brick and grey mortar, which in turn lay upon a layer, up to 0.4m thick, of black industrial waste consisting mainly of substantial chunks, up to 0.2m in length, of glassy vitreous slag mixed with black ashy silt and occasional red brick. Modern glazed pottery fragments were recovered from this layer. Below this industrial waste was a well-preserved metalled surface consisting of tightly set cobbles set in a thin black silt. At the north this surface abutted a foundation of coursed red brick which appeared to be earlier. Below the cobbling lay a thick layer (full thickness not established, but over 1m) consisting of rubble similar to that previously encountered, of ashy grey silt with much slate and a few small bone fragments. Excavation was discontinued in this layer on health and safety grounds, at a depth of 2.5m below the existing ground surface.

The stratigraphy in Trench 2 closely mirrored that of Trench 1, consisting of rubble layers, with the cobbled surface encountered at approximately the same depth. This was again lying atop the thick slate-rich rubble layer and again excavation was discontinued at 2.5m for safety reasons. Pottery of 18th/19th-century date was recovered from a well-stratified position at a depth of 2.4m in this trench.

The results were inconclusive, in that at a depth of 2.5m below modern ground surface neither subsoil nor strata of a date earlier than the later post-medieval period was reached. The sheer depth of the post-medieval rubble layers suggest deliberate infill or ‘made ground’ through the dumping of building and industrial waste to raise the ground level. This is scarcely surprising, given the riverside and generally marshy conditions which prevailed here in past centuries. The glassy slag layer encountered in Trench 1 may be material which originated in either of the two 18th/19th-century glassworks in the vicinity.

Ballycurreen Industrial Estate, Kinsale Road, Cork