2019:216 - Former Convent of Mercy Site, Richmond Street, Buttevant, Co. Cork, Cork

During testing at the site of the former Convent of Mercy, Buttevant, Co. Cork, a combined total of 190m of trenching was excavated across seven individual test trenches. The trench layouts were designed to investigate each of the five potential alignments of the medieval town wall which were hypothesised to traverse the site, as well as investigating areas of higher archaeological potential along the western margin of the site adjacent to Richmond Street, and, also, likely areas of development in the southern portion of the site. All trenches revealed significant depths of garden soil, a mid-grey sandy silt, which generally measured between 0.5m and 0.8m in depth. The garden soil contained frequent inclusions of 19th- and 20th-century ceramics and was most likely introduced into the site during landscaping works associated with the construction of the convent and supplemented during the years of garden use when this soil was planted and cultivated. Within Trenches 5 and 7 along the western margin of the site, the garden soil was underlain in places by a spread of brownish-black stony silt which contained frequent inclusions of modern ceramics, brick, slate and other early modern detritus. This spread of material likely dates to site preparation in advance of the construction of the convent and the landscaping of the grounds. Where revealed, natural subsoil consisted of a light yellowish-brown silty clay with frequent inclusions of naturally fragmented limestone. Outcroppings of limestone bedrock also regularly occurred within the trenches.

Probable or potential archaeological features were revealed in all seven of the excavated trenches. However, of most significance were the findings within Trenches 1 and 7. In Trench 1, at its eastern end, the basal remains of a substantial medieval wall were uncovered; this wall corresponds with the proposed alignment of the eastern portion of the medieval town wall hypothesised by Eamonn Cotter in 2010. The revealed wall, which measures c.2m in width, was dated by a sherd of medieval green glaze pottery which was recovered from within its fabric. In Trench 7, a seam of quarried bedrock and possible basal wall remnants, which were revealed at its northern end, appear to correspond with the alignment of a section of substantial east to west orientated wall uncovered by Rubicon during their 2015 excavations associated with the renewal of Richmond Street and Main Street. It is highly likely that both above-described features relate to the early 14th-century defensive town walls of Buttevant.

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