County: Dublin Site name: 41-46 South Great George’s Street, Dublin
Sites and Monuments Record No.: DU018-020 Licence number: 18E0661
Author: Paul Duffy, IAC Ltd
Site type: Medieval, post-medieval
Period/Dating: —
ITM: E 715544m, N 733777m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 53.341592, -6.264877
Testing was carried out at 41-46 South Great Georges Street in response to planning conditions attached to a proposed development by Dublin City Council (Planning Ref.: 2546/18). It follows a previous desktop report carried out by Faith Bailey and Maeve Tobin of IAC Ltd in February 2018.
Five hand-dug test pits and two machine-excavated test trenches were excavated from 12-19 November 2018, following previous testing in 2006.
The test pits measured 2m x 2m and were excavated within the basement level along the southern part of the site. All of these pits showed that the previous natural ground level had been scarped away. A post-medieval wall footing was identified in TP8. TP9 came down directly onto natural boulder clay, and in TP10, 11 and 12, the remains of a medieval ditch paralleling Stephen’s Street was uncovered. This ditch lies 2-3m north of Stephen Street with a surviving width of 1.1m and a surviving depth of 0.6m. A single sherd of Dublin-type coarse ware (late 12th-13th century) was recovered pressed into the top of the ditch fill in TP12.
The machine-excavated trenches were dug from ground level within the standing building along the eastern side of the site. The trenches confirmed the presence of 2-2.7m of 18th -century cellar backfill. Due to the constrained nature of the site, the small machine, the limited lighting and the continual collapse of the sides of the excavation, these trenches were inconclusive with regard to the presence or absence of underlying medieval stratigraphy.
Testing has shown that, in the western part of the site, the bottom levels of deep, earth-cut features, as well as the bottom courses of post-medieval wall footings survive beneath the existing basement floor slab. In the eastern part of the site, some evidence for similar deposits have been gleaned from testing. It is unclear if these deposits represent bulk soils or the base of deeper features that have been scarped away during the construction of the now infilled 18th-century cellars.
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