2010:096 - Madden Furniture, Station Road, Ennis, Clare

Archaeological investigations took place between October and December 2010 in advance of proposed redevelopment of Madden Furniture, Station Road, Ennis. Testing was carried out after demolition of part of the building and prior to the construction of new extended premises. The area to be investigated was 1095.9m².
Part of the site is within the footprint of the recently demolished building which had formerly been a factory that fronted Station Road. The extant part of the buildings has protected structure status, as defined in the Ennis and Environs Development Plan 2008–2014 due to its past function as a dance hall and has nostalgic value (RPS No. 90; NIAH Reg. No. 20001221). A substantial part of the site, however, is in the yard to the rear of where this building stood.
There is a plaque on the site as a memorial to the execution of three IRA volunteers. This has been removed for the duration of the site works.
After demolition of the premises, test-trenches were excavated. The testing showed evidence of building walls and materials. Part of the front jail perimeter wall was demolished as part of the construction works.
The initial investigations were machine-assisted as there was gravel and modern material covering the site. The area was machined until the upper courses of the walls were exposed. The remains were then hand-cleaned.
The jail was built in 1813 by the county Grand Jury. There were extensions in the 1840s to give a total capacity of 123 day cells by the time of its depiction on the first-edition OS map. This shows the location of the site as having been incorporated into the grounds of the ‘Gaol’, a large square enclosure which fronts on to ‘New Road’.
There are two rectangular yards directly inside the front perimeter wall. Ten buildings, varying greatly in size, stand enclosed by the perimeter wall. The prison is built on a radiating design, the shaded areas on the map representing a plan of the cells and associated built features, the six unshaded areas in front of these representing exercise yards divided from each other, presumably by masonry walls. The location of this large building is not within the footprint of the proposed development site but that of the most northerly of the buildings appears to have been.
Excavation showed evidence of part of the jail. This was composed of one jail building, three jail walls (in addition to the demolished perimeter wall) and factory remains from the 19th century.
The building was rectangular in plan and formed a bay-fronted single room. The entrance was composed of flagstone steps. The main footprint of the building had an interior length of 5.91m and width of 3.26m. The walls were 0.5m wide and were composed of three courses of irregular worked limestone bonded with lime mortar.
The building was disturbed by a possibly modern wall. There were also remains possibly of a mid-19th-century factory abutting the front wall of the building. This building was probably constructed in the latter half of the 19th century.
There were also three limestone walls remaining of the jail structure. Two of these had similar alignment, materials and construction techniques to the jail perimeter wall. They formed the front and back walls of the building found. The third had a perpendicular alignment and connected the two walls to form a rectangle. Four pieces of ammunition were found in a recess in one of these walls. They appear to be from the early 20th century and are possibly military issue.
The other finds from the site include glass bottles and a silver-plated spoon.
It is likely that more remains of the former Ennis County Gaol lie outside the proposed building works.