2008:713 - 17 High Street (‘The Hole in the Wall’), Kilkenny, Kilkenny

In September–October 2008 monitoring was undertaken of groundworks associated with the conservation and restoration works to the site known as the ‘Hole in the Wall’, No. 17 High Street (rear of), Kilkenny. The site forms the southern part of the inner house of the stone townhouse which was built 1582 by Martin Archer, a prominent city merchant. The Archer mansion survives relatively intact, albeit in modified form, and is one of the oldest extant Renaissance period townhouses in Ireland. Between c. 1750 and 1850 much of the house complex was given over to a tavern – the ‘Hole in the Wall’ – which was frequented by many notable personalities of the time. The site has been the subject of a certain amount of research though its archaeology remains poorly understood.
The works were of a small scale and localised in character and consequently the archaeological findings were quite limited. These were, in the main, walls and surfaces associated with the building’s use as an outhouse in the later 19th–20th centuries though some slight evidence for earlier activity was also encountered. Inside the former ‘Hole in the Wall’ what may have been the original (i.e. late 16th–17th-century) beaten-earth floor of the building was revealed sealed beneath a later culvert and flagstone paving which probably relates to its use as a tavern. In the yard to the rear a small section of a backfilled stone-lined garderobe pit was noted. The only artefacts recovered were 19th-century pottery sherds and fragments of glass bottles. No further archaeological interventions were required for the completion of the conservation and refurbishment works.