2008:1248 - The Mall, Waterford, Waterford

Waterford City Council proposed to develop new civic offices at the site of the former ESB offices on The Mall. The site is bounded by The Mall on the north, Bank Lane and Bolton Street on the east, the backyards of houses fronting Beau Street on the south and No. 20 The Mall on the west. Part of the site (former Bonded Stores and yard) has for long been in the ownership of Waterford City Council. Testing of areas currently vacant was requested by Waterford City Council to inform the development brief and design.
The site is located within the zone of archaeological potential for Waterford city (WA009–005) but outside the walled historic core in an area that was marsh until the 17th century. A route is likely to have existed to the south of this site between Colbeck Gate and St Brigid’s Church in the Viking Age and later to the Augustinian Priory of St Catherine’s in medieval times. Other than these, the general area was an intractable marsh and this is corroborated by evidence from the testing. The cartographic and literary sources indicate that the marsh was infilled in the 17th century, when soil was introduced to create ground for gardens. Thereafter, the site remained as a garden throughout the 18th century and the only buildings constructed on the site before the mid-19th century were Nos 21 and 22 The Mall at the south-west end and a rectangular building in the area of the Bonded Stores. The Bonded Stores were built in the mid-19th century and the houses fronting Beau Street were built around the same time. The first building on the north and east part of the site was Bishop Foy’s School built in the early 20th century and demolished in the 1960s. The ESB regional headquarters was built in the early 1970s on the site of the school and on ground which had throughout history been open space of one sort or another.
Ten trenches were excavated by a mechanical excavator with a 1m-wide toothless bucket. Below a depth of 1.25m it was not possible to enter the trenches for safety reasons, consequently the materials removed from lower levels were spread beside the trenches and examined. The evidence from the testing indicates that boulder clay lies at a consistent depth of 2.8–2.9m below the modern surface. Overlying the boulder clay is a layer of compacted organic material. This material is homogenous in nature and is composed almost entirely of reeds with only a few twigs and pieces of roundwood (unworked timber). The material is clearly of natural deposition indicating a marsh of reeds. The time span over which this material was laid down is unknown but is likely to be prehistoric. A layer of blue/grey silt covers the reeds. This naturally deposited material is also very homogenous, being generally c. 1m or more in depth with no apparent internal stratification. It remains unclear what influence, if any, the damning/diversion of the channel to create a millpond (Coldebeck Mill) had on the formation of this layer.
A layer of brown earth with silt and clay overlay the blue/grey clay. This layer was interpreted as an introduced deposit to create cultivable ground. Only a few sherds of pottery of 17th–19th-century date were recovered from the layer. The scarcity of finds may indicate that large-scale deposition of cess and refuse from within the nearby town was not a component of the reclamation of this area. In the upper c. 1m a fill of brick, mortar and stone of 18th- and 19th-century date indicates a deliberate introduction of hardcore to raise the ground level. The deposition may date to the latter half of the 19th or even the 20th century. A tennis court was built on The Mall end of the site while a cobblestone yard was created to the south of the Bonded Stores in c. the mid-19th century. The house at the corner of Beau Street and Bolton Street was part of a terrace fronting Beau Street. It was built in the early to mid-19th century directly on top of the estuarine silts and demolished in the early 21st century. A stone-lined well may be of late 17th- to 19th-century date. A metal pipe (pump stick) indicates that the well was in use until the 19th century or even later.
Overall the testing revealed that the potential archaeological resource of the site is low. The most likely potential concerns the possibility of objects lost, discarded or abandoned in the swamp. It is impossible to predict the likely occurrence, nature or frequency of such objects as none were recorded from the test-trenches. The reported discovery of some form of wooden boat or canoe in the course of construction of the ESB headquarters in the early 1970s and the discovery of ships’ timbers deep in layers of estuarine silts in the course of Waterford main drainage should alert us to the possibility that other such finds may exist at any level from 1m to 3m below the contemporary surface. Other objects may also lie in the estuarine layers but their presence or exact location is no more certain than what may be found in the bed of any river in proximity to a historic city centre.