EMAP_Progress_Reports_2009_2.pdf - The Heritage Council

Cork
and smaller plots. Type 4 buildings are sunken structures in which the floor is situated below
ground level. Type 5 structures describe small huts without roof supports which probably
functioned as animal pens or were utilised for other outdoor activities (Wallace 1992a, 17–8;
Fig. 11). Type 6 buildings refer to Sill-Beam structures with load-bearing walls which appear
to have been constructed from the early-twelfth century onwards in Waterford and Cork.
Type 7 refers to rectangular stone buildings found within Hiberno-Norse towns. They have
also only been found at Waterford and date to the mid twelfth century.
Early- Mid Twelfth Century Type 1 and Type 2 Post and Wattle Buildings
Excavations at Washington Street near the north end of the South Island revealed a
succession of post-and-wattle walled houses (Kelleher in prep.; Kelleher 2002; Hurley 2003a,
157-58). The north-eastern quadrant of the earliest structure, dated by dendrochronology to
A.D. 1124±9, was uncovered upon a clay platform 1.3m high, and retained in place by a
timber revetment. The building was a typical Type 1 house with evidence for a wattle wall
with a fragmentary outer curved wall at the north-eastern corner extending to a door jamb
and threshold. Finds associated with the building included a metal stick-pin, animal bone and
several bone cylinders (Kelleher 2002. The wattle walled house was replaced by another
wattle-walled structure represented by a single row of charred posts and in turn by the
remains of another mid-twelfth century Type 1 wattle-walled house (Hurley 2003a, 158). The
houses faced onto the main Street (South Main Street) and were associated with a range of
finds including medieval pottery, bronze stick-pins, a gaming-piece and whalebone, most
probably used as a chopping board (Kelleher 2002).
The remains of two post-and-wattle houses- stratigraphically pre-dating a mid-twelfth century
sill-beam structure were excavated at the junction of Hanover Street and South Main Street
on the South Island (Cleary 2003, 31-44; Hurley 2003a, 158) (Fig. 69). The charred remains
of two rows of stake-holes and a 3.34m length of wattle and a clay floor represented the
evidence for the north and east corner of the first wattle-walled house. The building was
situated to the southeast of a second wattle-walled house represented by 25 stakes which
roughly corresponded to the location of the overlying sill-beam house. The 25 stakes
occurred in two rows and a discrete group and was associated with an occupation floor
covered by charcoal enriched sod-like patches. The structures were identified as the remains
of circa early twelfth-century Type 2 ancillary building associated with a Type 1 house
underlying the sill-beam structure.
A series of east-west aligned Hiberno-Scandinavian houses (Types 1, 2 and 6) built on plots
on a clay platform were excavated at the junction of South Main Street (40-48) and Old Post
Office Lane, adjacent to the South Gate Bridge in the south-eastern quadrant of the South
Island (Ní Loingsigh 2003 & 2005). The Type 1 and Type 2 buildings dated from between
A.D. 1100-1140 and pre-dated four mid twelfth-century timber-framed sill-beam houses. The
Type 1 and Type 2 structures comprised nineteen houses with four distinct phases of activity.
The buildings were built three deep to the east of the north-south main medieval street lying
beneath the modern South Main Street.
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