2015:390 - ROSSCARBERY: Carbery Lane, Cork

Five 50m long, east-west trenches were excavated at 10m intervals within a terraced garden to the east of Rosscarbery Cathedral as part of an assessment of a proposed residential house development. The Cork Urban Archaeological Survey identifies the projected line of a potential town wall in the west end of the garden although there no physical evidence for a defensive wall within the town and the historical evidence for such a feature is tenuous. The site is shown as undeveloped ground on all consulted historical maps and the existing terraces are present on the 1:2500 OS map (c. 1900). Nothing of archaeological significance was identified during investigations carried out by M.F. Hurley (Licence 97E0068) in an adjoining area to the south, which was also on the projected wall line.

While outside the proposed development area, a small trial pit was also hand excavated at the base of the churchyard wall bounding the west end of the garden at the request of the National Monuments Service. This revealed that the wall rested on a long footing stone that extended 0.2m below existing ground levels. The footing stone rested on a layer of compact soil that overlay the natural subsoil which was encountered 0.7m below modern ground level.

All of the trenches within the garden extended across the projected line of the potential town wall and no traces of any masonry, foundations or rubble were noted. The garden soil encountered in all of the trenches was composed of a homogenous, dark brown sandy silt with inclusions of brick fragments as well as occasional sherds of post-medieval and early modern pottery.

The garden terraces were found to have been created with introduced soils, which measured up to 1.8m in depth in area, rather than the result of scarps cut into the hillside. The presence of early modern inclusions down to the base of the introduced garden soil suggested that this material was introduced during late 19th/early 20th century. The garden soil decreased in depth as the trenches extended downslope towards the lower ground in the east where it averaged 0.5m deep. The underlying subsoil was found to slope steeply down the hillslope and the artificial terraces may have been created in order to reduce the natural steep incline.

An irregular, grey brown deposit was noted on the subsoil surface under a 1.8m deep section of the garden soil layer in the west end of the garden. The trench began to collapse at this depth and only a brief visual inspection of the deposit was possible. It was not present in the adjacent trenches, indicating that was a localised feature. It is tentatively interpreted as the remains of a tree-pit based on the irregular sides and loose soil fill.

Occasional cultivation furrows were noted along the lower slopes and traces of brick fragments and spread lime were observed on the surface of the fills. A 0.9m wide, north-south orientated, stone drain was uncovered in the subsoil in the low-lying ground in the the east end of all the trenches. This appears to have been have been created to gather ground water flowing downslope. Occasional inclusions of brick fragments within the stone lining were noted during manual cleaning. Nothing of archaeological significance was noted during testing at this site but monitoring of development works was recommended due to the constraints created by the deep garden soils encountered during trenching.