2017:316 - 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. In 2017 occasional punctures in the ground surface were monitored, and over the winter of 2017/18 a number of trenches were cut in chosen locations around the castle to throw light on the 16th- and 17th-century landscaping. Recent monitoring had found remains of a large cobbled area on the north side of the castle, split by a path making for the central door of the 16th-century north range, a wide path of coal and cinder at the foot of the north range, and building remains near its east end.

In early May 2017 Shanarc Archaeology Ltd carried out a resistivity survey of the castle grounds, north and east of the present buildings. The ground was particularly dry, and the results were disappointing. So in December 2017 and January 2018 trenches were cut to answer some of the outstanding questions.

The cobbling appears to be original to the 16th-century house, set into the surface of a large shelf cut into gravel on the hillside and split by a central path. On one side the shelf ends at a tall garden wall, still standing, on the other it almost reaches the line of the town wall. It extends at least 5m north of the present castle precinct, and the main approach to the house was probably from the Main Street of Carrick, along the middle of present Castle Street, and into the north-west corner of the cobbled yard. At an early stage a revetment wall was built against the gravel face of the shelf, and linear garden beds were cut along the foot of the wall.

The east range of the 16th-century castle reused a length of town wall, or castle wall which continued north to become the town wall, but this wall was broken cleanly at the north-east corner of the new ranges, and remembered with a wide pilaster. No remains of the town wall were found to the north during the investigations, but ground level for the wall was retained when the shelf was cut for the cobbled yard, and the wall or a rebuild is shown on the Taylor map of 1699.

With the construction of the 16th-century ranges gravel pits east of the castle and the town wall were infilled with disturbed gravel and soil, quarried from the new shelf beyond the north range. A boundary wall with gateway and cobbled passage was built on the fill and against the north-east corner of the ranges. The cobbling was rutted by wheeled vehicles, and the ruts continued north onto a wide coal and cinder path running parallel with the town wall (or wall line). There was no suggestion of former garden beds beside this cinder path, and the refilled hillside inside and outside the new enclosure wall appears to have been fallow, with no formal garden.

Box drains were set into the shelf north of the new ranges before the surface was cobbled. The drains were cut into gravel subsoil, and must have been dry at most times, nonetheless the main drain, close to the front of the north range, included a tank or large inspection pit, perhaps with a building overhead. The tank invaded the footprint of the town wall, but this may be coincidental; the wall here had almost certainly been taken down to ground level to facilitate the considerable landscaping project.

In the early 19th century the castle surroundings were relandscaped. The cobbled shelf north of the castle was infilled with rubble and topped with imported soil, and the ground east of the castle was similarly filled with rubble and resurfaced with soil.

Stradbally