2013:146 - 74 O’Connell Street, Clonmel, Tipperary

Monitoring was undertaken further to granting planning permission to alter a retail building including to the front and rear elevations and internal alterations to the ground floor to change the building into one retail unit at No. 74 O’Connell Street, Clonmel.

The development site is located in the centre of Clonmel, on the north side of O’Connell Street. O’Connell Street was the main medieval street within Clonmel. It is first mentioned in the Ormond Deeds (1175-1350) c. 1350 as the “King’s Street”. During much of the medieval period the street was known as “High Street” which extended from Bridge Street to the Main Guard.

The castle, traditionally called “Clonmel Castle” was supposedly located in the vicinity of No. 75 O’Connell Street, the adjoining property to the development site. This castle was demolished c. 1810.  No evidence has yet emerged to support such a castle existed at No. 75 O’Connell Street and very little has been written about this supposed early castle.

The structure that occupied the site at the time of monitoring comprised a vacant walk-through shopping mall/arcade, accessed both from O’Connell Street and to the rear via a Local Authority car park.  The structure was renovated in the mid-1980s when it was turned into the shopping mall, replacing the Woolworth’s department store, which closed in the early 1980s. The works in the 1980s entailed extensive internal works including removal of walls and sub-dividing/partitioning the building into small shopping units with a central walk through.

There was extensive sub-surface ground works in the northern two thirds of the site whilst throughout the entire site, both at ground and first floor level, existing internal walls were removed and stairways were demolished. The internal demolition works were assessed and monitored. All walls, sections of walling and stairways were of modern date and appear to be contemporary with the major renovation works undertaken on the building in the mid-1980s when it was turned into a small shopping mall with several individual retail units.

The ground level in approximately two thirds of the site, i.e. the northern part, was reduced by 0.6m.  A thick layer of concrete, 0.15-0.2m in depth, covered this area. Underlying the concrete, throughout all of the reduced area, there was fairly consistent deposition of in-fill which comprised rubble, demolition material, frequent small and medium stones and occasional larger stones, some of which were worked. This in-fill was intermixed with a darkish brown coarse-grained sandy gravelly clay.   Service pipes and a small red brick manhole were revealed in the southern part of the reduced area whilst a red brick foundation extended north/south for c. 25m close to the western side of the site.

A number of areas were excavated for small pads to support steel columns. Measuring on average 1.1m x 1m and c. 0.71m deep, similar type of material was found in the areas of the pads as that encountered during the reduction of the site by 0.6m. All of them extended alongside foundation walls, either the boundary walls for the building or internal walls.

The deepest excavation was undertaken for the lift shaft and a foundation wall, both of which were sited towards the rear of the site.  The excavation for the shaft extended to a depth of 1.3m below the original floor level of the Shopping Arcade. The area was heavily disturbed due to the presence of a plastic service pipe along its west side whilst the foundation for a red brick wall extended along its east side with a concrete lip protruding into the opening for a thickness of 0.2m, 0.9m below ground level.

Excavations for a wall foundation trench, 13.6m long and 1.3m wide, extended to a depth of 1.75m below the ground floor of the Mall. Immediately beneath the in-fill was a thin tarmacadam surface, dating to the latter half of the last century, which sealed a series of fills and lenses pertaining to an earlier demolition phase, also firmly placed in the 20th century. The lower level of the trench was also dominated with demolition in-fill which sealed a reasonably well preserved cobbled surface. This surface occurred 0.92m below the top of the trench and 1.75m below the original ground floor surface of the shopping Arcade. A shed of a broken brewery bottle was embedded into the cobbles at the northern edge of the surface whilst a piece of red brick was found at the south end of the surface and appeared to be part of the surface. Its southern end had been damaged by the construction of a later wall foundation.  The evidence would suggest this surface was not very old, perhaps of 19^th-century date.

Although no medieval remains were found on the site, the presence of large pieces of dressed stone would strongly suggest this plot was once occupied by a structure of some importance and antiquity.

Mary Henry Archaeological Services Ltd, 17 Staunton Row, Clonmel, Co. Tipperary