2006:2005 - Penney’s store and Egan’s pub, Barronstrand Street, Waterford, Waterford

To assess the archaeological impact of redeveloping the present Penney’s store in Barronstrand Street, Waterford, the store was surveyed by ground-penetrating radar (Earthsound Archaeological Geophysics), and five small trenches were cut and investigated. Two further test-trenches were cut in the staff carpark (the site of a proposed stock room extension), and a trench was cut in the former Egan’s pub next door. Several trenches had previously been cut in Egan’s (see No. 2004 above) (part of the proposed enlarged store), and standing walls had been investigated.
Under the present Penney’s were found the truncated bank of the 13th-century city wall, and masonry which might have belonged to a tower. The curtain wall had not survived. Behind the clay bank, in the probable footprint of the Dominican west range, the site had been truncated to below the priory (medieval) ground level, on to the floor of a probably 12th-century wattle building. Timber impressions from a later (13th century?) heavy building were found at this level. The building remains may overlie the ditch of the late 11th-century city defence.
Two test-trenches close to the street front cut into recently filled cellars, and a trench on the south (uphill) side of the store found post-medieval pits cutting subsoil (all medieval ground levels truncated).
One of the trenches in the carpark exposed a (possible) medieval wall truncated to its construction level, the other cut into a deep demolition deposit of roof slate.
The trench in Egan’s attempted to locate a medieval enclosure wall but only reached a late 17th-century demolition/construction level, under imported garden soil.
A great deal of archaeological material is threatened by the proposed slight lowering of the floor in Penney’s.