County: Tipperary Site name: CASHEL: Indaville, Boherclough Street
Sites and Monuments Record No.: N/A Licence number: 06E0415
Author: Maurice F. Hurley
Site type: Town defences
Period/Dating: Post Medieval (AD 1600-AD 1750)
ITM: E 607623m, N 640604m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 52.516757, -7.887675
Testing was carried out within the stone-walled garden of the house known as Indaville, in Boherclough Street, Cashel, Co. Tipperary, in advance of an application to develop part of the garden. The entire site lay within the zone of archaeological potential for Cashel. The first-edition OS map of 1843 shows the townland boundary marking the urban borough of Cashel as following the line of the town wall. In the site at Indaville, the town wall crossed the property from the known extant remains to the east and west of Indaville House. This corresponds to where a layer of mortar rubble and shattered stone (suggested to be the line of the town wall) was found in the course of the testing.
Nine test-trenches were excavated, each 1.6m wide; the length and depth varied. The site can be divided into two areas: inside the town wall and outside the wall. In general the archaeological stratigraphy in both areas was indistinguishable. No identifiable archaeological stratigraphy existed within the topsoil either inside or outside the wall. Neither was any apparent archaeological feature cut into the subsoil. The topsoil is brown earth cultivated as a garden over many years. The topsoil contained a range of weathered sherds of 18th- and 19th-century pottery and clay-pipe stems. The random scatter of finds (of similar date) from the surface to c. 1m in depth is indicative of a cultivated soil probably fertilised with dung and cess from the nearby town. The ruin of a stone-built summerhouse still stood in the garden.
Two features predating the 18th-century garden were identified in the testing, the town wall and a ditch adjoining the outer face of the town wall.
The town wall was represented by a band of rubble c. 1.7m wide and c. 0.2m deep. Chipped stone and mortar was indicative of a wall that was quarried for stone (‘robbed’). Evidence for the wall was uncovered in three of the test-trenches. The presence of a semi-complete 18th-century red earthenware vessel close to the base of the wall provides the best evidence for the date of the quarrying of the town wall. The ditch lying outside the town wall may pre-date the wall or may be contemporary. Excavations by Mary O’Donnell elsewhere in Cashel have shown that the ditch pre-dated at least some of the town wall (Excavations 2000, No. 916, 00E0312). The proportions of the fosse are similar to that excavated at Bank Place by O’Donnell.
6 Clarence Court, St Luke’s, Cork
