County: Kilkenny Site name: Butler House Gardens, Deansground, Kilkenny
Sites and Monuments Record No.: KK019-026001 Licence number: 18E0547
Author: Grace Fegan, Kilkenny Civic Trust
Site type: Town defences
Period/Dating: Late Medieval (AD 1100-AD 1599)
ITM: E 650751m, N 655599m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 52.649213, -7.249993
Archaeological monitoring of a drainage trench, running north-west/south-east in the north-east portion of Butler House Gardens was undertaken in September/October 2018.
Garden soil was present to a depth of +1m, over a subsoil of yellowish-grey clayey silt with frequent stone inclusions. Finds of butchered bone and 20th-century pottery were recovered from the garden soil.
In the south-easternmost extent of the main trench, what appeared to be a section of the town wall was uncovered. The exposed face was made up of roughly hewn limestone blocks and stones in a random, uncoursed construction set in a lime mortar and with a slight batter. This section was 0.6m below current ground level, projected 0.42m north-west from the existing, above-ground north-east/south-west garden boundary wall and continued below the base of the trench. The masonry was abutted by a later north-west/south-east-running boundary wall.
The exposed masonry was preserved entirely in situ, covered with geotextile and the trench backfilled with gravel and garden soil.
Two offsets running southwest were excavated at right angles to the primary trench. The layout of the southern trench was altered to avoid any disturbance of the masonry, leaving a 3m buffer between the trench and the line of the town wall. These trenches were excavated through garden soil and no features or finds of archaeological significance were recovered.
While this section of the city wall was recorded during the 2003 Conservation Plan, monitoring identified its northern/interior extent as it survives in this corner of Butler House Gardens. The portion exposed seems to correspond to the internal wall walk, which would have been used for patrol and attack. Similarities can be drawn with the portion of the wall recorded at Talbot’s Tower. However, the portion exposed in Butler Gardens is considerably narrower than that recorded at Talbot’s Tower.
As was recorded by Munby and Tyler in 2003, the current ground level in Butler Garden (interior to the city wall) is 1.09m above that in the Castle Yard (exterior to the wall). Monitoring demonstrated that the difference in height in this area is made up of garden soil, possibly introduced in the 20th century.
Butler House, Patrick Street, Kilkenny
