County: Dublin Site name: 4–7 St John’s Terrace, Pimlico
Sites and Monuments Record No.: N/A Licence number: 08E0493
Author: Antoine Giacometti, Arch-Tech Ltd, 32 Fitzwilliam Place, Dublin 2.
Site type: Post-medieval urban/military
Period/Dating: —
ITM: E 714496m, N 733476m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 53.339120, -6.280712
Test-trenching was undertaken at a small site at Nos 4–7 St John’s Terrace, Pimlico, Dublin 8. Due to the small size of the development site, c. 50% of the site has been subject to testing.
The natural subsoil, a mottled brownish-grey stony gravelly sand, was identified 1.15m below the surface. Directly above this was a 0.3–0.5m thick layer of almost sterile orange/brown silty clay/gravel build-up, with rare inclusions of brick and metal fragments. Analysis by Peter Walsh of records of the 1640s city defences during the Confederate Wars places the development site on the inside of an artillery fort, which was bounded by present-day John Street, Summer Street, Braithwaite Street and Pimlico, evidence for which was suggested in previous testing at 4A John Street South. This sterile layer may therefore represent the building up and consolidation of the interior of the artillery fort in and around 1643, however due to the lack of clear evidence this is purely speculative.
Later features identified included a 19th-century brick-lined cistern which measured (internally) 2.26m by 2.1m across and c. 1.3m in height, and an earlier wooden water pipe, which may have been 18th-century in date. Later evidence for the construction of the early 20th-century artisan cottages on the site of the proposed development was also identified.
