County: Kerry Site name: 14 Castle Street Lower, Tralee
Sites and Monuments Record No.: KE029–119 Licence number: 08E0966
Author: Tony Bartlett, Anú Archaeology, 3 Lios Na Lohart, Ballyvelly, Tralee, Co. Kerry.
Site type: 19th-century, urban
Period/Dating: —
ITM: E 483345m, N 614413m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 52.269028, -9.709206
Pre-development testing was carried out at No. 14 Lower Castle Street, Tralee. A single test-trench 3m (north–south) by 1.1m by 0.8–0.9m in depth was excavated by hand in the rear yard.
The basal course of a single wall and a cobbled surface of 19th-century date were recorded. No evidence of activity pre-dating the 19th century was revealed.
Beneath the concrete covering the yard, which was 0.1m in thickness, lay an overburden comprising limestone rubble, mortar, fragments of red brick and roof slates, 19th-century white-glazed ceramics and glass bottle shards, etc. The basal course of a limestone rubble wall was revealed 0.5m from the southern limit of the trench orientated east–west and at a depth of 0.05m beneath the concrete surface. The height of this basal course was 0.12m. The wall had been disturbed and partially robbed out in antiquity and was bonded in a lime and sand mortar. It measured 0.6m in width and had a 0.3m-wide footing on the south face. A 0.3m-wide footing was also recorded on the north face, although this was not as well preserved. The wall was set on a thin 0.03m-thick layer of light-orange/brown silty clay which overlay a 0.15m-thick cobbled surface which extended to the northern limit of the trench. The cobbled surface comprised sub-rounded limestone stones averaging 0.1m by 0.1m by 0.15m, set on edge.
The cobbled surface in turn overlay a 0.3m thick layer of dark-grey silty clay, C6, which produced several 19th-century white-glazed ceramics, glass bottle shards, window-glass shards, a single shard of mirror glass and clay-pipe stem fragments. This layer lay directly over the natural subsoil, mottled light-orange/grey clay.
At the southern extent of the trench, to the south of the wall, no cobbled surface was recorded. Here, the overburden directly overlay C6, which in turn overlay subsoil. The subsoil here was found at a depth of 0.9m. At the south-west corner of the trench a portion of a circular pit was revealed. The pit was steep-sided, finished at a flat base and was filled with C6. The pit extended for 0.4m into the trench and was 0.42m in depth, and 19th-century white-glazed ceramic sherds and a clay-pipe stem fragment were found at its base.
