County: Kilkenny Site name: DEAN STREET UPPER, KILKENNY
Sites and Monuments Record No.: N/A Licence number: 11E0264
Author: Patrick J.H. Neary
Site type: Urban medieval
Period/Dating: —
ITM: E 650140m, N 656263m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 52.655237, -7.258921
The site at Upper Dean Street supposedly follows the line of the outer precinct of what is now St Canice’s Cathedral but started off in the 6th or 7th century as an ecclesiastical settlement enclosed by an outer and an inner precinct bank.
Monitoring of excavations for duct-laying along Upper Dean Street resulted in the exposure of two early 19th-century box drains at the bottom of the street outside the Dean Street Medical Centre. Also exposed was a late to post-medieval cobbled area that had been covered over with a deposit of locally available gravelly boulder clay as roadfill material, which, together with the concrete and tarmac surface, measured 0.7m in depth.
A pit containing some glass and pottery was present in the south-west corner of the cutting that was excavated for the ESB substation in the shrubbery at Butts Green. This most probably dates from the 19th century.
Medieval and post-medieval pottery, an array of animal bones and teeth and some metal objects were also found.
24 Talbot’s Inch Village, Freshford Road, Kilkenny
