County: Dublin Site name: Woodchester building, 31-36 Golden Lane/Ship Street Great, Dublin 8.
Sites and Monuments Record No.: DU 018-02082, DU 018-020083, DU 018-02089 Licence number: 14E0060
Author: Linzi Simpson
Site type: Urban post-medieval
Period/Dating: —
ITM: E 715382m, N 733736m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 53.341259, -6.267323
This programme of works involved the construction of a new sub-station within the existing Woodchester building, along the Ship Street Great Frontage. The building has no basement in this location after previous investigations found significant archaeological deposits related to the church and cemetery site of St Michael Le pole, a Recorded Monument located to the north-west of the site under discussion. In addition to this, an earlier excavation was carried out by the writer just north of the site and this located the truncated remains of a Viking warrior burial along with deposits associated with medieval settlement (Excavations 2001, 409: 2002: Excavations 2002, 0576).
The sub-station and access corridor measured approximately 12m square but was designed to fit within the footprint of the known demolished brick cellars along the Ship Street Great frontage. The works included the removal of a pre-cast floor slab that had been designed to sit over the rubble deposits and was approximately 1m higher than present street level of Ship Street Great. The new slab, however, was to lie 0.9m below present street level resulting in a reduction in rubble deposits of approximately 1.9m for the new slab with deeper excavation around the original pads, which were sitting on boulder clay approximately 2.6m below present ground level.
The monitoring programme established that the deposits to be removed were comprised entirely of brick rubble and dark brown organic clay, containing 18th-century brick, mortar, limestone fragments and organic material such as timber and animal bones. However, these deposits were very mixed (and not banded) suggesting disturbance in this area, even after demolition of the terraced brick houses. This was confirmed by the exposure of a chunk of an old brick culvert upright in the eastern section. A layer of rubble approximately 1m in depth was left in situ beneath the new floor of the sub-station in between the piles. The pile pads were found to sit on boulder clay but with no surviving archaeological horizons. This is probably because the cellars of the terraced buildings cut through the boulder clay to an undisturbed level.
28 Cabinteely Close, Cabinteely, Dublin 18
