2012:354 - Robing Room, Bishop’s Palace, Church Lane, Kilkenny, Kilkenny

A second season of excavation was carried out at the Robing Room in the grounds of the former palace of the bishop of Ossory, now headquarters to the Heritage Council. The excavation was funded by the Heritage Council and was run in conjunction with an NUI Maynooth ‘Practical Archaeology’ module. The excavation extended the cutting that was excavated the previous year (Excavations 2011, No. 383) and recovered new evidence for an early medieval ecclesiastical enclosure ditch, a later medieval lime kiln and an early modern quarry pit.
The ditch was only partially exposed in the cutting. Its excavated dimensions were 5m (north-west/south-east) length x 1.9m width x 1.28m depth to its base; its full width may be reconstructed as being in the order of 4m. It was backfilled with a largely sterile gravel and orange clay deposit from which an animal bone was radiocarbon dated to 990-1150 cal. AD (Beta 328388). An antler-working waste pit that was excavated in the first season had cut through the top of the ditch backfill and a deer tine from this was dated to 1000-1140 cal. AD. The ditch is a small segment of the northern ecclesiastical enclosure and its backfilling in the 11th-early 12th century can be associated with a grand reorganisation of the ecclesiastical settlement of Cill Chainnigh.
Around a hundred additional fragments of antler- and bone-working waste from the 10th-12th-century comb-making industry were also recovered, predominantly from later medieval contexts.
In the middle of the cutting a sub-circular limekiln, 1.8m x 1.4m x 0.52m deep, was excavated into the former ecclesiastical enclosure ditch. Its sides were burnt and lined with powdered lime and its backfill produced Leinster Cooking Ware and Kilkenny type pottery.

Kilkenny Archaeology, 12 Parliament Street, Kilkenny