2007:975 - 6 Watergate Street (rear of), Kilkenny, Kilkenny

An impact assessment at No. 6 Watergate Street, Kilkenny, was requested by the client arising from a proposal to construct five apartment units to the rear of the existing dwelling. The site lies within the area of constraint for the historic town of Kilkenny and adjacent to the line of the Kilkenny city wall. No. 6 Watergate Street is also positioned within the Kilkenny City Centre Conservation Area, as defined in the Kilkenny County Development Plan (2002).
Three test-pits were excavated by hand within the proposed development area, an overgrown rear garden. A broadly similar stratigraphic sequence was recorded within the three cuttings. The earliest context encountered was an alluvial silt on to which a wall was constructed. The silt demonstrates that the river originally extended to the south of the existing boundary wall with the Breagagh. The line followed by the wall is the same as the standing section of town wall, though 4m to the west. Only the lowest courses and its collapse survived, though it was possible to define a wall thickness of at least 1.1m. Sealing it were deposits of 13th–14th-century date. All of this suggests that this was an earlier section of river wall than the present wall that defines the north of the site. Evidently the earlier example had collapsed, perhaps in the 14th century. Once this occurred a succession of garden-soil deposits were imported on to the site, raising the ground level by c. 1.1m. Associated pottery suggests this was imported first in the 14th century, again in the 17th century and finally in the 18th–19th century. A retaining wall would have been necessary to contain all of this material. One feature of interest was a specifically constructed working surface that would easily have accommodated a quernstone. Further assessment and redesign was recommended.