2005:812 - DEAN STREET UPPER, KILKENNY, Kilkenny

A number of test-pits were excavated in 2003 by Sheila Lane in the garden of a presbytery house located on the north side of Upper Dean Street, Kilkenny (Excavations 2003, No. 1008). This site is recorded as the probable location of a post-medieval chapel, which went out of use during the 19th century, and there are now no visible aboveground remains of this building. The remains of a mortared floor surface associated with the chapel were uncovered below the topsoil layer in one of the test-pits in the north end of the garden.
Further testing was carried out in 2005 in order to establish the full extent of this floor and also to investigate the remainder of the garden. The floor survived as a 0.1m-thick compact mortar layer, which was found to have been extensively disturbed. This appeared to have formed a bedding deposit for an overlying floor surface, but there were no traces of floor tiles or flagstones in the exposed portions of the floor. A single fragment of a red earthenware floor tile, of probable 17th/18th-century date, was uncovered in a test-trench in the south end of the garden and this may have originated from the chapel floor. There were no visible traces of an associated wall or foundation trench uncovered in any of the test-trenches and the layout of the proposed development has been altered in order to avoid this feature. The partially demolished remains of a post-medieval boundary wall were uncovered below the topsoil layer in the south-west corner of the garden. The stratigraphy in all other areas of the garden consisted of thick deposits of modern and post-medieval garden soils. There were no archaeological features or finds uncovered in a test-trench opened in an adjacent street front property on Upper Dean Street.