County: Kilkenny Site name: Coach Road, Kilkenny
Sites and Monuments Record No.: KE019–026 Licence number: 06E0075
Author: Patrick J.H. Neary, 24 Talbots Inch Village, Freshford Road, Kilkenny.
Site type: Urban, medieval
Period/Dating: —
ITM: E 650239m, N 656343m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 52.655951, -7.257436
The Borough Council wanted to re-order the kerb line and parking spaces in the streetscape and to repair, replace and insert some new service ducting in the immediate vicinity of St Canice’s Cathedral, which dates from the 13th century but was built on the site of an earlier ecclesiastical complex containing a round tower. This work required monitoring.
Monitoring revealed traces of what had previously been identified by Andrew Gittins (Excavations 2002, No. 1006, 02E0845) as part of an embankment. This was interpreted as being part of an inner precinct enclosure right outside the main gate into the cathedral at the top of Coach Road.
Also found were some disarticulated human skeletal remains that would have been part of the redeposited material following a burial, along with some decorated floor-tile fragments that probably originated in a nearby kiln that was uncovered a few metres away in a separate excavation carried out simultaneously by Coilín Ó Drisceoill on the orchard attached to the deanery (see No. 1062 below).
