2024:127 - East Wall Road, Dublin

The Archaeological Diving Company Ltd (ADCO) was appointed by Dublin Port Company Ltd (DPC) to monitor a programme of geotechnical Site Investigations (SI) conducted to inform the Liffey-Tolka Project (LTP), which is granted planning permission. The LTP will construct a new 1.4km-long pedestrian walkway and a 2-way cycle lane along East Wall Road and Bond Road from the River Liffey to the Tolka Estuary and is one component of DPC’s ongoing programme to soften the Port boundary and expedite Port-City integration initiatives.

The LTP will interface with a series of heritage assets along its route. These include the route of the eighteenth-century sea wall that gave its name to East Wall Road and which lies buried beneath the port boundary that reaches north to Tolka Quay Road. As the port expanded across the sea wall in the course of the nineteenth century, new structures were built, including the historical quaysides of Steam Packet Wharf, Crossberth Quay and East Quay. Dublin Port’s late nineteenth-century boundary wall that extends along East Wall Road and Bond Road is also an artefact of the port’s history, and in places follows the alignment of the former sea wall.

SI works were completed in 2022, with additional investigations conducted in 2024 to inform detailed design. Archaeological monitoring proved instructive. As the east-facing façade of the former East Wall polder that enclosed the North Lotts, the eighteenth-century sea wall is preserved along much of the LTP route south of Alexandra Road, where it is has been observed consistently to be well built, employing calp limestone blocks and retaining a base batter. The location of the sea wall façade in relation to the port boundary wall varies along the LTP route. The foundations of drainage systems and structures linked to the nineteenth- and early twentieth-century port buildings, constructed within the expanding port area, are still buried to the east of and against the base of the port boundary wall, and overlie and affect elements of the underlying sea wall and the Patent Slip. A small number of objects recovered derive from redeposition of reclamation material for the most part, while a smaller number may relate to activities take took place on newly reclaimed ground.