County: Galway Site name: COURTHOUSE LANE
Sites and Monuments Record No.: GA094–100 Licence number: 08E0467
Author: William O. Frazer. Skeyelarque2@fastmail.fm
Site type: Monitoring, medieval
Period/Dating: —
ITM: E 529681m, N 725597m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 53.276034, -9.054334
Monitoring of the laying of a gas pipeline in Courthouse Lane was undertaken along a 23m extent that passed by the north side of the Revenue Custom House building and its new extension. That extension houses the remains of the medieval hall of the Red Earl, still visible behind structural glass. The work was undertaken in June 2009 with the assistance of Kevin Weldon.
The pipe trench was excavated to an approximate depth of 0.6m and revealed the upper level of a brown, organic-rich surviving soil horizon at approximately that depth below the existing street level (with only road-related modern disturbance overlying). The upper course of a 0.5m-wide north–south mortared stone wall, also at a depth of 0.6m below present street level, was identified crossing the trench at c. 3m south of the remains of the Red Earl’s Hall visible in the Revenue Custom house extension. No artefacts were recovered, but it is likely that the horizon and wall are medieval and broadly contemporary with the 13th–14th-century hall.
