2006:600 - Mother Redcap’s Market, Back Lane and Lamb Alley, Dublin, Dublin

A third phase of assessment took place in the large spaces which until recently were occupied by Mother Redcap’s Market and pub. The site is particularly important, as it is defined by the line of the city wall on the Lamb Alley side to the south-west, while its frontage to the north-east is along Back Lane, the medieval La Rochelle Street.
The assessment followed on the work of Helen Kehoe and Claire Cotter, who had tested the site for a previous scheme. Kehoe excavated a single trench against the 18th-century Lamb Alley wall (Excavations 2002, No. 553, 02E1667) and recorded what appeared to be medieval masonry in the foundation courses, 0.95m below the interior slab. Cotter excavated seven test-pits in 2003 (Excavations 2003, 496, 03E1765) and located extensive medieval and post-medieval deposits as high as c. 0.75m below the slab.
The testing phase under discussion took place in July and consisted of the mechanical excavation of sixteen trenches, located all over the market/pub complex and in an adjacent yard. Five main foci of activity were identified: the Hiberno-Norse defensive bank, medieval cultivation, with structural evidence on the Back Lane frontage, general post-medieval occupation and the Kildare Hall complex.
Hiberno-Norse bank
The redeposited material making up the Hiberno-Norse bank was located in each of the four trenches excavated against the Lamb Alley wall (from the east Trenches 13, 5, 16 and 17) and was possibly located at a much lower level in Trenches 18 and 19. The relatively high surviving level of the bank places it well above the surviving medieval levels across the site.
Sections through the bank were evident in all four trenches, with a maximum recorded height of the bank at 0.97m below the slab evident in Trench 17, where the material appeared homogenous. In Trench 16, three separate depositions forming the bank were exposed. The lowest was a stiff green/grey redeposited subsoil, which was overlain by a band of greasy brown/grey clay, 60–80mm in depth, which petered out to the south-east. Over this was a similar material evident in the other trenches along the wall, a medium yellow clay with a softer consistency to the material below. The bank fell off in the west-facing section relatively gradually, apparently untruncated and sealed by a mixed deposit of soil and rubble containing 18th-century pottery.
In Trench 5 the bank had been truncated, forming a flat surface from which the most recent wall at that location was constructed. One large homogenous deposit was recorded, making up the bulk of the bank, with several smaller lenses forming the upper deposits. In Trench 13, a large construction trench for the wall cut through and truncated the bank, leaving some surviving material in the south-facing section. Again, a similar profile was recorded, with a bulk deposit forming most of the bank in the excavated area, with smaller lenses above.
Material possibly related to the bank was recorded at the very bottom of Trenches 18 and 19. In Trench 18, the material was recorded at 14.11m OD and appeared to be redeposited subsoil, similar to the material making up the bank in Trench 16. The material was located 0.94m below and presumably at the bottom of the slope. In Trench 19, a similar material was recorded at the bottom of the trench at 13.69m OD.
It appears that the bank must have had a topographical presence in the back of property plots fronting Back Lane well into the post-medieval period; the absence of any evidence for building in the area is possibly a function of the localised rise in ground level and this may well explain why the market floor is raised above the level of the street at Back Lane.
The bank was truncated along the length of the wall by four different wall construction trenches, by post-medieval pits and later latrine structures. The bank survives to a level of between 15.1m and 15.42m OD at the southern end of the site, where the proposed finished floor level of the café bar is 14.3m. From the centre of the site to the north it survives at levels of between 14.9m and 15.05m OD.
Medieval deposits
Medieval deposits were located more towards the Back Lane frontage and were evident at varying depths in Trenches 21, 22 and 8, with the uppermost levels of medieval activity evident in Test-pits 1, 2, 4 and 7 and in Trenches 11, 15, 18 and 19. The most extensive medieval deposits were recorded in Trench 21.
The upper levels of the deposits occurred at 13.1m and survived to a level of 15.15m OD in the centre of the site. With the exception of the possible cill beam recorded in Trench 21, there was no evidence at the depths achieved for medieval structures, although it is highly likely that they survive on the Back Lane side of the site, which was not as intensively tested and where there appears to have been little truncation by later cellars.
No medieval deposits were recorded in several of the trenches and test-pits. In Trenches 9, 10, 12 and 23 later cellars truncated the deposits at least as far as the 2.1m reach of the bucket. Similarly, Test-pits 3 and 6 did not achieve levels where medieval deposits may have been encountered.
Post-medieval deposits
The deposits generally occurred almost directly underneath the present site surface and consisted of demolition debris that sealed cultivated garden soils. The latter contained the characteristic indicators of such material, frequent inclusions of minute fragments of pottery, marine shell and charcoal. The deposit sequences tended to be anything up to 1.5m in depth before the uppermost levels of the medieval deposits were encountered.
There was some evidence where clear profiles were obtained of more cultivated soils towards the upper levels, suggesting a period when the ground may not have been built upon. A general picture of dereliction within the walls of the city has emerged in early post-medieval levels on excavations at Christ Church Place and Bride Street. The post-Restoration property boom overturned this scenario and new leases issued from the late 1660s attest to waste plots of ground being redeveloped all over the city. The development of Kildare Hall in the 1620s can thus be considered in the context of the area being quite marginalised, despite its proximity to High Street and the medieval Tholsel.
Kildare Hall
Documentary evidence for Kildare Hall, the Jesuit chapel, novitiate and college which opened on the site in 1628, has recently been published by Rolf Loeber and Magda Stouthamer-Loeber. They locate the complex of structures opposite the entrance to Tailors’ Hall (previously thought to be the site of the Jesuit establishment) on ground leased from the chapter of Christ Church Cathedral, on the basis of several later leases referring to ‘Kildare Chapel now hospital’ (1662), ‘Kildare House’ for use as a school (1672) and the ‘hospital’ (1697) (Loeber and Stouthamer-Loeber 2005).
The archaeological evidence for the complex of structures consisted of fragments of brick walls located in several trenches across the site. The brick was in all cases fired to a bright buff hue and mostly conformed to a pre-Imperial 9 by 41⁄4 by 21⁄2 inches, although most of the bricks used in the wall in Trench 24 appear to have been quarter lengths. No fixtures or fittings associated with a religious institution were recovered from the trenches and pits. The pottery recovered from the area did not suggest a high-status structure on the site during this period, despite the fact that the Earl of Cork refers to the complex as being ‘richly adorned and furnished for the Jesuits’ (ibid. 253).
Conclusion
The results of the various archaeological investigations undertaken in the Mother Redcap’s complex provide a simple set of levels indicating the uppermost levels of archaeological deposits. There does not appear to be significant truncation from later basement structures evident across the site. Unusually, Hiberno-Norse levels are present along the Lamb Alley frontage at 14.96–15.52m OD, higher than the upper levels of medieval activity elsewhere on the site, which were recorded at 13.2m–15.25m OD. This is due to the fact that the defensive bank, which enclosed the settlement on its western side, is present beneath the foundations of the City Wall along Lamb Alley and lies very close to the present ground surface at levels between 0.6m and 1.1m under the existing slab.
The medieval deposits, where exposed, appear to consist of cultivated garden soils; however, along the Back Lane frontage structural evidence, in the form of what appeared to be an in situ timber ground beam, was recorded at 13.57m OD, at c. 2.5m under the present slab level.
The wall fronting Lamb Alley does not appear to have medieval fabric, apart from one location in Trench 16, where the lower course of masonry sits in a shallow construction trench on top of the Hiberno-Norse bank. The external appearance of the wall or walls attests to their being of 18th- or 19th-century date; the wall, however, undeniably follows the line of the medieval town wall and can be considered its notional extension.
Of particular note is a high area of potentially very sensitive archaeology, towards the centre of the site in Trench 24. This is the result of the survival of a red-brick wall just 0.22m below the present slab, which more than likely constitutes evidence for Kildare Hall. The distinctive handmade brick has been identified in other trenches across the site, but especially in Trenches 10, 11, 14 and 17. In the case of the latter, what appears to be a latrine shaft was found, which originally discharged out through the city wall at a point below the present pavement level.
The development of Mother Redcap’s and the Iveagh Markets received its grant of planning permission from Dublin City Council in March 2007; further work on the site will be reported in future volumes of this bulletin.
Reference
Loeber, R. and Stouthamer-Loeber, M. 2005 Kildare Hall, the Countess of Kildare’s patronage of the Jesuits, and the liturgical setting of Catholic worship in early seventeenth-century Dublin. In E. Fitzpatrick and R. Gillespie (eds.), The parish in medieval and early modern Ireland. Four Courts Press, Dublin.