County: Dublin Site name: Lime Street, Dublin 2
Sites and Monuments Record No.: N/A Licence number: 16E0620
Author: Niall Colfer
Site type: Urban post-medieval
Period/Dating: —
ITM: E 716967m, N 734328m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 53.346229, -6.243315
Testing was undertaken at Limes Street, Dublin 2, in advance of both a commercial and residential development to fulfill Condition 8D of planning permission for the development (Planning Ref: DSDZ2608/16). The proposed development area was located on the eastern side of Lime Street between Sir John Rogerson’s Quay and Hanover Street East including 20-24 Sir John Rogerson's Quay (a protected structure), 25-27 Sir John Rogerson's Quay and 1-5 and 12-13 Lime Street, Dublin 2.
Testing at Lime Street revealed extensive post-medieval archaeological deposits at the northern end of the site. Brick and limestone walls, travelling in both a north to south and east to west direction, were located in Trenches 1, 2, and 3 at a depth of between 0.2m and 1.5m below present ground level. In the case of the examples fronting onto Sir John Rogerson’s Quay these can be confidently identified as being associated with houses visible on maps by Rocque (1756) and Scalé (1773) and thus providing a date of construction in the first half of the 18th century. When referring to the houses fronting onto Lime Street in the north-western area of the site, these buildings are first portrayed on the Ordnance Survey 1st edition mapping of 1847 suggesting an early 19th-century date of construction. These dates are underpinned by the fact that ship timbers were used underneath the walls as a raft formation over the natural silts on which the houses could be built, identifying these walls to be the first to be built post reclamation of the area.
Ceramics found in all trenches provide an 18th/19th-century date for all archaeological contexts below the current ware floor. Refined white earthenware, cream ware (including one sherd of Cauliflower ware), print ware, tin-glazed earthenware (with some examples of Chinoiserie), blackware, orangeware and glazed stonewares were recorded. One piece of Staffordshire slipware, with a possible late 17th-century date, was uncovered from the polder layer in Trench 3.
Archaeology and Built Heritage
