2007:1553 - 12 MARKET STreet, ABBEYQUARTER SOUTH, SLIGO, Sligo

This application is for alterations and extension to a house and associated works at No. 12 Market Street, similar to that done on No. 11 (Excavations 2005, No. 1383, 04E1013), one of three contemporary houses at the core area of the medieval town of Sligo. The three buildings totalled 37ft in width and had 4-inch-thick red-brick party walls without specific foundations.
Monitoring of the works began in mid-June 2007. Gutting had begun, which meant that the concealed drawing or painting of the Dominican abbey or the Dominican priory that was on a partition wall was destroyed before archaeological involvement. National Monuments Service had required an archaeological assessment but Sligo Planning Authority did not inform the applicant and did not include an archaeological planning condition.
The floor of No. 12 consisted of sandstone or shale flagstones, generally in the order of 0.75m by 0.5m by 0.06–0.6m by 0.6m by 0.05m, but that immediately inside the door was 1.08m by 0.51m by 0.15m thick. There was little or no occupation material under No. 12 and there were no archaeological finds. This was in contrast with No. 11, which revealed broken wine bottles of probable 18th-century date under a brick floor, a George II halfpenny with a date range of 1747–1755 and a minor amount of occupation material, occasional pieces of glass, red brick, oyster and cockle shell and a few bones in the soil under the building and a single small fragment of what looks like medieval pottery.
From prior work we knew that parts of the mast of a ship, apparently pine, were used structurally within the building, supporting the first floor and running through from No. 12 to No. 13; one of these was 0.31m in diameter. As these two pieces could not be extracted without endangering No. 13, building permission was sought, and granted, to cut these. Two lengths of ship’s mast were used as purlins and these remain in place, reaching from the No. 11/12 wall to the No. 12/13 wall and continuing as purlins for No. 13. These measure 0.15m to 0.19m in diameter.
A lean-to shed covering part of the yard had parts of a mast in the roof. This was only realised after the initial gutting of the building had been under way for some days when the cut ends of ship’s timbers showed.
The name of the ship, which would help establish a terminus post quem for the buildings, still eludes us. A deed of conveyance of 1854 recites a lease of 1813 from Burton to Joseph Henry, footwear merchant, Encumbered Estates for 1854 from C to Peyton for Nos 12 and 13 on Market Street, totalling 37ft and a reference ‘Bryan O’Rourke, Ship Broker’, listed for 1824, may point to as yet unrecognised documents on the change of ownership with subsequent building of these properties. The results of ongoing research will be incorporated into the report on No. 11 Market Street.