County: Waterford Site name: 10 Great George’s Street, Waterford
Sites and Monuments Record No.: WA009–005 Licence number: 06E0504
Author: Mary Henry, Mary Henry Archaeological Services Ltd, 17 Staunton Row, Clonmel, Co. Tipperary.
Site type: Urban
Period/Dating: —
ITM: E 660578m, N 612564m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 52.261442, -7.112584
Monitoring was undertaken at No. 10 Great George’s Street, Waterford. Planning permission had been granted to demolish the interior of an existing building and undertake refurbishment works, converting it to a retail unit. The eastern half of Great George’s Street is located in the north-west part of the medieval city. The medieval city wall extends in an approximate south-south-west/north-north-east direction through No. 7 Great George’s Street, c. 18m west of No. 10.
All excavation works were undertaken using a mini mechanical track machine. Groundworks entailed excavating pads to facilitate the erection of a steel frame to support the building shell. Following the erection of the steel frame, the side walls were underpinned and finally a strip trench was excavated to facilitate the building of a new rear wall.
No medieval archaeology was found on the site, as excavation levels were not very deep (not exceeding 1m). Monitoring of groundworks on the site revealed high levels of disturbance. Following the removal of the overburden and building debris to a level of 0.4–0.5m below the original floor level, a very mixed deposit was found. It comprised a mid- to dark-greyish-brown coarse-grained sandy clay with inclusions of small and medium stones, broken slate, red brick, bits of mortar and pottery and broken clay pipe dating to the 18th/19th century. Extensive services were found across the site and the presence of RSJ supports within the original building had resulted in the site being highly disturbed as part of renovation works undertaken c. 40 years previously.
