2008:717 - The Parade/Mayor’s Walk/Canal Square/Canal Walk, Kilkenny, Kilkenny

Work commenced on the construction phase of the project to refurbish and enhance the area around Kilkenny Castle in April 2008 and will not be completed until well into the latter half of 2009. The work was monitored and this resulted in many features and deposits being identified dating from the late 12th/early 13th century onwards.
When the Parade and Rose Garden were created in the late 1600s the area of land needed contained a number of houses which were cleared away as part of the new development. The precise location of these buildings and their burgage plots has not been established, but it is hoped that the information collected during the course of the present project will go some way towards increasing our knowledge and understanding of the geography of the area before the 17th-century redevelopment. Metalled surfaces were encountered in a number of locations and the earliest of these surfaces is provisionally interpreted as dating from the 14th century. Beneath this was an array of features including linear ditches (which may indicate burgage plots), pits, post-holes, stake-holes and various deposits or spreads of materials that were probably associated with the construction phase of Kilkenny Castle.
In a location that runs up the Parade between the blocked-up gateway in the middle of the Rose Garden wall on the north side and the doorway of No. 10 The Parade on the south side (c. 26m long) was a group of burgage plots that produced pottery finds from the period of the 13th to the 17th century. It most probably represents the plots of some of the houses that were removed to facilitate the 17th-century development. Beneath the Rose Garden wall there was clear evidence of metalworking retrieved from the samples that were processed.
A wide variety of stone- and brick-built drains were also encountered, including one which ran under the Rose Garden wall from what appears to have been a structure that was attached to the inside of the wall when it was first built. This drain was brick-built and capped with slates and the structure which it serviced was probably a garden toilet.
At Canal Square the remains of substantial foundations were revealed in some of the service trenches and the width of these exceeded 1m in places suggesting an early date. Also found was the remains of a cobbled boat-slip that is shown on the first-edition OS map. Another axe head was found within 15m of the example that was recovered from Cutting 9 in the testing exercise of 2007 (Excavations 2007, No. 968).
An early 19th-century refurbishment of the Parade and Mayor’s/Gravel Walk that included a large drainage culvert running down the middle of the Parade left its mark underground and new drains were inserted into the Mayor’s/Gravel Walk. Levels were altered, with ground being made up in some places and scarped away in others.
A collection of coins and other metal objects was recovered from the spoil that was excavated, including grapeshot and musket balls.