2006:1065 - KILKENNY: 44–48 St Kieran’s Street, Kilkenny

Excavations were carried out at 44–48 St Kieran’s Street between July and October 2006 and additional excavation/monitoring is scheduled for 2007. The work follows test-trenching carried out by Richard Clutterbuck in 2003 (Excavations 2003, No. 1023) and early 2006 (see No. 1064, Excavations 2006). A site plan, general description and some background historical information can be found in Excavations 2003. The site was formerly occupied by five terraced houses. Following the collapse of one or more of those buildings during the 1960s, the area was cleared and a retaining wall was built along the rear. The most recent use of the plot was as a carpark.

St Kieran’s Street, or Back Lane as it was formerly known, formed a north–south artery within the medieval town of Kilkenny. In the 13th century, the area under investigation was bounded on the east by the flood-plain of the River Nore and on the west by the elevated ridge, crowned by St Mary’s Church and graveyard. The eastern flank of the high curtilage wall of St Mary’s forms the rear boundary of the site at present. The wall is post-medieval in date and appears largely unchanged from the footprint shown on Rocque’s map of 1758. Recent investigations by Ken Hanley (Excavations 2000, No. 550, 00E0712) and Ian Doyle (Excavations 2003, No. 1024, 03E0572) in St Mary’s Lane, which runs parallel to the curtilage wall along the south, west and north, indicate that the burial area associated with the church has contracted since the medieval period. This may also be true of the eastern boundary. The present-day drop in ground level between St Mary’s and St Kieran’s Street is exaggerated by the build-up of burial soils in the graveyard and by scarping associated with the construction of the curtilage wall. If the original ‘drop’ was far less steep, it is quite possible that the church property extended on to the lower ground within the present site.

Rocque’s map also shows a lane extending across the rear of the development site. This was accessed from the north-eastern end of St Mary’s Lane but, in the 18th century at any rate, it does not appear to have connected with the southern arm of the lane. The former access point suggests that the lane lay at roughly the same level as the top of the 1970s retaining wall; i.e. about 2m above the remainder of the site.

The excavations to date indicate that the ground east of the lane sloped off gently towards the river; there was also a less pronounced north–south incline. The natural sediments are made up of bands of fine sand and coarse gravels overlying deep pockets of fine yellow boulder clay. These deposits were extensively quarried for building material during the 18th century. Indeed, a 2m-wide quarry trench that ran almost the full length of the site may account for the subsidence that took place in the 1960s. A number of other large 18th-century pits were recorded at the north and east baulks. As a result of the quarrying activity, and the subsequent disturbance associated with the construction of the 19th-century houses, the medieval horizon at the site was heavily truncated. Medieval deposits survived best in a strip adjoining the east balk. An ‘island’ of medieval stratigraphy was also preserved beneath a 17th/18th-century oven located midway along the length of the site.

Post-excavation work is at an early stage and the following site narrative is based on the information available at the time of writing.

A hollow uncovered around the middle of the excavated area seems partly to have been a natural feature. Residues of dumped material on its northern side and a slot-trench cut into its western side were the earliest man-made features uncovered at the site. The deep, narrow slot-trench is probably the footprint of a fence and may be linked with reclamation works. Alternatively, it could be the remains of a boundary that ran along the edge of the river flood-plain. The associated pottery is of 13th/14th-century date. A parallel stretch of walling (F103) was subsequently constructed 1m west of the slot-trench. The surviving portion is 6m long, but the northern and southern ends were truncated by the 18th-century quarrying activity. The wall was a substantial feature averaging 1m in width. The foundations were stepped back into the boulder clay and built of blocks of limestone brought to rough courses. The function of the wall is unclear; it certainly appears to be medieval in date, as 13th/14th-century pottery was recovered, both from its foundation trench and from the deposits abutting its east face. No other walls of certain medieval date were identified on the site, however. One possibility is that F103 is the only surviving portion of a medieval boundary wall associated with St Mary’s. Alternatively, the wall may represent the west side of a building that was subsequently destroyed. In both cases, the survival of F103 could be explained by the fact that the foundations were carried down to a deeper level in order to bridge the hollow.

F103 may be contemporary with a cobbled surface located in the eastern half of the site, but, as excavated, there was no direct stratigraphical relationship between the two. The cobbles were laid directly on the natural gravels or on a level-raising raft of gravel and stones. Over half of the surface was cut away by later activity, but there is no doubt that the roadway originally extended the full length of the site (some 25m) and continued beyond it to the north and south. The cobbling also continued into the east (or street-front) baulk; the width of the road was thus in excess of 3.5m. The western edge survived only at the north and south ends of the site. There were no delimiting features and the likelihood is that the roadway hugged the foot of the natural slope. The medieval road thus seems to have followed the same trajectory as the adjoining section of present-day St Kieran’s Street but was set further back from it to the west.

Silted-up deposits overlying the cobbling yielded 13th/14th-century pottery. While the build-up of medieval stratigraphy was quite deep in places (up to 0.5m), there was no direct or indirect evidence for any associated houses, property boundaries, etc. The character of the sediments was more consistent with gradual build-up rather than dumping and the proportion of food refuse present was quite low.

The next identifiable event in the history of the site was the excavation of a 6–7m-long linear trench (F204). The feature extended across the line of the natural hollow, cutting away the entire middle section of the cobbled roadway. The only feasible explanation for the trench is the mining of building materials: there is a good deposit of fine yellow clay in that area. F204 was not bottomed, but the feature seems to have averaged around 1m deep. The northern half was backfilled with stony clays that yielded medieval pottery.

The primary fill of the southern half was similar, but a secondary fill made up primarily of cobbles, gravels and mixed clays contained human skeletal remains. These had clearly been derived from a graveyard and, given the proximity of St Mary’s, the likelihood is that they came from there. While the original context of the burials seems to have been medieval, the date at which they were disturbed and thrown on to the site is unclear. Any date from the medieval period down to the 18th century would be compatible with the stratigraphical sequence at the site. The presence of a quantity of broken roof slates in the mix suggests that the disturbance of the graves took place during a period of demolition/building. Records for St Mary’s indicate that significant changes were made to the church during the mid-18th century and the curtilage wall dates to the same general period. The construction of St Mary’s Almshouse, located along the northern side of St Mary’s Lane, also began in the later 18th century. It is equally possible that the skeletal material was dumped on the site in the late medieval period. An intriguing possibility is that the burials may be associated with the carved tomb slabs recently found in the River Nore near St John’s Bridge by Ian Doyle (Excavations 2002, No. 1026, 01E0980). The slabs are 13th/14th-century in date and appear to have been reused in the pre-1763 bridge on the site. The earliest record of their presence in the river is 1618. St Mary’s burial-ground is one of a number of possible locations suggested by Doyle for the origin of the tomb slabs.

A 2m-long north–south slot-trench (F260) located in the south-eastern corner of the site also belongs to the period after the cobbled roadway had fallen into disuse. The northern end of the slot was cut away during the 18th-century quarrying. A large number of stake-holes were identified within the slot-trench and on the surface of the natural clay surrounding it. The stake-holes were sealed beneath a layer of hard-packed yellow clay and stones that extended intermittently across the width of the site and abutted the foundations of the street-front property wall. The latter appears to be of two-phase construction along that sector, but it is doubtful if either phase pre-dates the 18th century.

All the remaining structures and stratigraphy on the site were post-medieval in date. The earliest of these was a brick-built bread oven that was built over the backfilled northern half of F204. The western side of the oven was butted against the medieval wall segment, F103. The oven door faced south and the wall foundations uncovered by Richard Clutterbuck in Test-trench 4 (Excavations 2003, No. 1023, 03E1204) are probably part of the structure. Rake-out from the oven extended over a wide area to the east and north. That fact, and the fact that the surrounding area was uneven and unsurfaced, suggests that the oven was probably located in an outbuilding. The structure was deliberately demolished, probably when the 19th-century houses were built. It must have fallen into disuse before that, however, as the 18th-century quarrying cut away the ground to the north and south of it.

Work in 2007 will concentrate on the raised area of fill contained between the 18th-century curtilage wall of St Mary’s and the 1970s retaining wall. Test-trenching carried out in that area in 2003 has indicated that the bulk of the infill deposits are of very recent date. Exposure of the foundations and substrata of the churchyard wall, however, may shed some light on the extent of the church lands, the nature of the medieval activity on the site and the fate of the laneway shown on Rocque’s map.