2016:431 - Ormond Castle, Carrick-on-Suir, Tipperary

Groundworks have been monitored in and around Ormond Castle since the OPW embarked on a programme of refurbishment and upgrading services in 2014.

By 2016 most of the groundworks were finished. In January the proposed route for drains in Pill Road, running past the south side of the castle, was tested and approved, and the pipelaying was monitored later in the year. The test trench (Tr 34) outside the castle’s Watergate encountered a likely solid quay at 0.9m below ground level. This had been built across the blocked Watergate entry and is probably post-medieval. A concentration of stones at c.1.3m below ground level may be the remains of the medieval quay, or may be the base of the likely post-medieval structure.

The second trench (Tr 35), c.20m west of the castle, encountered a deep mixed soil with river silt over a thin organic river silt over likely fluvioglacial silt at 1.4m below ground level.

The monitored trench for the drains (Tr 59) was cut from the town’s main drains in Castle Lane, then along Pill Road before connecting with new drains on the east side of the castle. In Castle Lane the trench cut through 1.4-1.8m of post-medieval fill onto the silt of the former river bed. Along Pill Road the shallowing trench failed to break through the reclamation fill, and where it passed the castle it cleared the fill, barely grazing the cinder road surface over the likely quay.

Only the last c. 20m of the excavation, by now past the south-east corner of the castle and heading north, exposed material of interest. Two box drains, a ditch, and a layer of building debris are probably associated with the late use of the castle buildings, prior to the extensive clearance of c. 1816. Pre-18th-century levels were not exposed.