2008:392 - Mother Redcap’s Market, Back Lane, Dublin, Dublin

A fourth assessment took place of the archaeological deposits at the site of Mother Redcap’s Market, a complex of structures located between Back Lane and Lamb Alley. The results of earlier assessments have been reported in previous editions of Excavations (see Excavations 2006, No. 600 for details). The site is one of three which are to be redeveloped as part of the Iveagh Markets Restoration Project.
The lack of archaeological information on the street frontage was identified as an issue in the eventual planning adjudication of the site and five additional trenches were requested. They were opened to cellar slabs and/or archaeological deposits, augmenting the information recovered from Trenches 8, 9, 22 and 23 from the previous phase of testing.
Lying adjacent to and within the medieval city wall, the site is extremely sensitive from an archaeological perspective. The remains of the city wall run along and beneath its western (Lamb Alley) elevation which now presents as an 18th-century rebuild. The site footprint incorporates the line of the wall extending north-eastwards to incorporate the frontage on to Back Lane, which was an important medieval street known as La Rochelle Street, presumably one of the premier residential streets of the city. The site has the potential to contain some of the richest and best-preserved Viking and Anglo-Norman archaeological deposits within the medieval city on the basis of the survival of a Hiberno-Norse earthen bank which pre-dates the wall and the medieval deposits which present at a relatively high level on the Back Lane frontage. In addition the site also contains the remains of a 17th-century Jesuit chapel and novitiate.
The Back Lane frontage is presently occupied by a 19th-century office building and a disused public house. Both structures have been extensively stripped out over the past two years, where most of the modern (late 20th-century) concrete block walls have been removed. The street front spaces link to a complex of industrial spaces extending back to the Lamb Alley frontage, which, until the early 1980s, functioned as Winstanley’s footwear factory. Most of the site is in fact taken up by the factory floor, which was at a later date converted to market use. The Back Lane frontage would appear to have no basement dating to the period of the factory conversion (c. 1875); however, initial archaeological investigation suggested that earlier backfilled cellars existed in at least some of the plots. This has been confirmed in this phase of testing.
The new trenches were allocated the numbers 25–29, with Trench 25 located to the south-east and Trench 29 to the north-west of the Back Lane frontage. Trench 25 was located over an 18th-century cellar. Taken with the evidence from the previous trenches excavated immediately adjacent, a picture emerges of the upper level of the medieval deposits sitting at between c. 13.1–13.25m OD in the area of Trenches 25 and 8, where the presence of post-medieval cellars under Trench 9 appears to have truncated the medieval deposits to at least 13.5m OD. The post-medieval build up where no cellars were present comprised possible cultivation soils in Trench 8, sealed by cobbled surfaces which were in turn sealed by demolition debris.
Trench 26 was opened within a small space containing a corner fireplace, with evidence for panelling along the stripped-back brick wall. The trench extended for 4m along the street frontage and back to the south for 3.3m. After breaking out a 19th-century lean mix slab, loose backfill was found to occupy the space to a depth of 1.95m at c. 13m OD. This comprised demolition rubble with roofing slate with little or no soil present. Leather scraps, glass bottles and mass-produced ceramic fragments were present within the material, the bottles and pottery dating to the middle of the 19th century. This material, along with the lime plaster adhering to the interior walls, indicates a backfilled cellar, the cellar floor comprising a brick surface set into a mortar bedding. It was not possible to remove a section of the floor by hand and as it was beyond the reach of the machine, the trench was abandoned. The results from Trench 26 can be compared with those from Trench 9 which are referred to above. In both cases post-medieval cellars were present to a known depth of 13m OD and medieval deposits were not encountered.
Both trenches were opened within an 18th-century building whose interior layout appears to have survived its conversion to office space in c. 1875. It would appear that the present façade was constructed after the primary façade was demolished (partly into the cellar spaces), with an obviously successful join made with the existing interior walls.
The footprint of the earlier building (No. 49 Back Lane, prior to the amalgamation of the plots by Winstanley’s) can be reconstructed from the evidence recorded in Trench 9, which recovered its eastern wall, which is collinear with the plot boundary which appears to have extended all the way back to the city wall at Lamb Alley. The western wall was that surviving wall incorporating the corner fireplace at cellar level. An entrance hall extended back to the east of the principal space, its western wall surviving the 19th-century alterations. The western wall was altered by inserting a new fireplace in the ground floor space and by breaking through a door ope into the adjoining No. 48. The building was quite narrow, with a width of c. 6m. This quite possibly corresponds to the width of the medieval burgage plot.
Trench 27 was opened just to the west of Trench 26, at the far side of the party wall, within No. 48 Back Lane. Extending for 6.6m along the street frontage, the trench was ramped back by 5m to allow machine access. The area opened to archaeological deposits extended back 3m from the street frontage. A similar sequence to that in Trench 26 was encountered, with a substantial brick floor recorded at 2.1m under the modern floor surface, again at c. 13m OD. The backfill sealing it contained more soil than the adjoining cellar to the east and correspondingly less demolition material. The same range of mid-19th-century ceramics was recorded, mostly English transfer printed wares and locally produced black glazed red earthenwares. The space had been subdivided by a badly constructed double-skin brick wall which extended back from the street frontage for at least 3m. It does not, however, appear to be primary to the cellar, not having being bonded into the façade wall. It was not possible to remove the brick, which was well set into whatever was below. It is possible that a flagstone floor was laid over the brick and partly removed prior to demolition. The presence of a cellar here presumably extends the truncation of the underlying medieval deposits further west along the street frontage. While it was not possible to reduce the trench to medieval deposits, the evidence for such material elsewhere along the frontage, taken with the importance of the street as a residential thoroughfare, may dictate against there ever having been substantial post-medieval soils. Most of the footprint and plot dimensions of the earlier property were evident on the ground, the plot width extending to 6.25m, again, possibly a survival of the medieval burgage plot width. An annotated manuscript map dating to 1793 identifies the property as ‘James Nowlans hold[ing]s formerly the Kings Hospital’ (NLI, MS 2789, f.39). As the Royal Hospital occupied the site after the removal of the Jesuits, the Loebers suggest that the passage through No. 48 accessing the back plot may have been the entrance through to Kildare Hall. In any event, there was no archaeological evidence recovered for the passage and it would appear unlikely that an entrance such as the one depicted would extend over a cellar.
Trench 28 was located under No. 47, just short of and to the east of a break in the line of the street frontage, a feature which has survived from the time of the first edition of the OS and one which is evident on a manuscript lease map NLI MS 21F87, f.77. This has been dated to the late 19th century by the Loebers (2006); however, it is more likely to date to the period immediately prior to the OS.
Trench 3 adjacent was opened to a width of 4m along the street frontage, extending back for 3m to the south. A sondage was excavated through loose backfill deposits and again it was found that a cellar occupied the area with a ground slab depth of 2m, to c. 13.15m OD. The backfill comprised mostly demolition rubble and several clay roof tiles were recovered from the material. The cellar floor was made up of a hard-packed mortar and it was decided not to excavate further due to the danger of undermining the adjacent wall to the west.
No. 47 extends on the available historic maps as far as the break in the frontage, where the façade of No. 46 (immediately to the west) protruded just over 1m beyond the frontage to the east. Again, the building was cellared, the ground slab presumably truncating the upper levels of the medieval deposits below, which in Trench 22, 12m to the west, survived at 13.98m OD and possibly even as high as 14.73m OD.
Advantage was taken of the larger space within Mother Redcap’s pub to open an area 11m in length (north–south) by 3m (Trench 29). The trench was thus opened from the front to the back wall of what was No. 46 Back Lane prior to Winstanley’s development of the site. Trench 22, excavated during the last phase of testing, was located some 8m to the west in No. 45 and there were no cellars recorded. Nos 45 and 46 appear to have been built at the same time, on either side of a narrow covered alley leading to Fegan’s Court, which has been tentatively identified by the Loebers as comprising the cloister of Kildare Hall. The full extent of the trench was reduced by 0.8m, with a smaller area towards the street frontage reduced by hand for a further 0.5m. It was found that the area had not been cellared and that in situ medieval deposits survived at 1.2m under the former floor of the bar. The archaeological deposits in the area indicate that there is no cellar present, where the cobbled surface probably indicates an entrance through to what became Fegan’s Court. The deposits sealed by the cobbles indicate some post-medieval occupation, with an upper level of medieval occupation possibly as high as 14.56m OD, barely 0.84m under the floor level of the pub. The stratigraphy can be compared to that in the adjacent Trench 22. Here the medieval deposits were located at 1.32m under the pub floor. These consisted of lenses of burnt yellow clay over a dark-brown semi-organic clay containing Dublin-type wares, deposited over further lenses of drier material. Sealing this material was a brown sandy clay containing post-medieval pottery and a sherd of Dublin-type ware. The frequency of crushed marine shell through the deposit is indicative of cultivation and this deposit is presumably a post-medieval one. Its upper level of c. 14.73m OD signalled the maximum upper level of the medieval deposits.
Trench 23 had previously been excavated further to the west of Trench 22, at the far side of a major wall incorporating a fireplace and stack, which may pre-date the consolidation of the plots into Winstanley’s factory in the 1870s. The trench measured 2.3m2 and was excavated to a depth of 2.1m below the floor level. Demolition rubble was recorded in all four sections of the trench, indicating the presence of a deep backfilled cellar within this plot.
This phase of testing was specifically designed to investigate the nature of the substrates along the frontage on Back Lane. The results from the five trenches opened to a certain extent confirm those obtained from the previous Trenches 8–9 and 22–23: that the frontage is extensively cellared to a depth of 2m, with the exception of an area towards the western end, where the upper levels of medieval occupation are significantly higher than one would have imagined. The cellar spaces recorded tend to conform to the plot widths of the properties as depicted on the first edition of the OS and the earlier lease map held in the National Library. Indeed, there is evidence to suggest that a substantial amount of upstanding fabric survives in what was No. 49, with perhaps a lesser survival in No. 48 (the location of Trenches 26 and 27). Where the cellars truncate the upper archaeological levels by as much as 1.3m, the nature of the investigation did not permit further excavation into the medieval deposits evident in Trench 29. However, on the basis of information recovered from other sites excavated along Back Lane, there could be up to 4m of stratified deposits surviving, where they are not truncated by later cellaring.
Reference
Loeber, R. and Stouthamer-Loeber, M. ‘Kildare Hall, the countess of Kildare’s patronage of the Jesuits, and the liturgical setting of Catholic worship in early seventeenth-century Dublin’ in E. FitzPatrick and R. Gillespie (eds) The parish in medieval and early modern Ireland Community, Territory and Building, Dublin, 2006, 242–265.