2024:625 - 149 Walkin Street, Jamesgreen, Kilkenny, Kilkenny

Pre-construction archaeological testing works were undertaken as part of seeking planning permission to build an extension to a dwelling house at Walkin Street. The site is within the constraint area for a church, graveyard, holy well, hermitage, stone sculpture and architectural fragment (KK019-025001, KK019-025002, KK019-025003, KK019-025004, KK019-025005 & KK019-025006 respectively).

The extension occupied the rear and side garden of a two-storey dwelling house. Part of a terrace of houses built in the 1930s, the existing house occupies the north side of Walkin Street with its garden abutting the stone boundary wall of the graveyard. The houses built in the 1930s replaced a row of small houses which were extant in the main in the 1840s through to the start of the twentieth century. In addition to both sides of Walkin Street being fronted with terraced housing in the 1840s, there was a row of houses at right angles to the north side of Walkin Street. The access laneway to this terrace of houses abutted the west wall of the graveyard. This terrace of houses was gone by the start of the twentieth century. The eastern half of the garden area of the development site occupies part of the access laneway which served the terrace of houses denoted on the 1840s OS map.

Two test trenches were opened on the imprint of the proposed extension. Both trenches were opened to the rear and side of the existing dwelling house, within the garden and occupying the former terraced housing and laneway which extended northwards off Walkin Street. The upper 300mm of both trenches were dominated by a well-worked garden soil with modern inclusions of domestic waste. Extending to the base of both trenches was a mixed, dark grey-brown, coarse-grained sandy gravel clay with inclusions of building debris and domestic waste such as broken glass and crockery of nineteenth- and twentieth-century date.  At the base of trench No. 2, a light brown, compact sand gravelly deposition was exposed. It was considered this may have been the natural deposition. Occurring at the 500mm level, it was not further excavated as the excavations for the raft foundation will not exceed a depth of 500mm. At the north-east end of trench No. 1 the remains of a wall, 560mm wide, were exposed crossing the opening on an approximate north-south axis. It was considered this wall was likely to have been part of the terrace of the demolished houses which formerly stood in this area with associated domestic dumped waste.