AR01055_EMAP_Gazetteer_of_Sites_4-2_10.pdf - The Heritage ...

Waterford
By the early thirteenth century, fully framed sill-beam timber superstructures were being
raised upon on stone-footings. The plank walls set inside sill-beam foundations were raised
on the low stone walls which were used to both level the beam and avoid underlying
dampness. Five stone footed buildings were excavated at Waterford (1986-92) and contained
load-bearing walls. Stone-footed structures were replaced by completely stone-built houses
and undercrofts by the mid-thirteenth century.
Distribution
The comprehensive excavations fronting onto Peter Street (Fig. 305) yielded details of
fourteen contiguous plots along an area almost 90m long, each containing the superimposed
strata of at least twelve levels of houses (Scully & McCutcheon 1997, 53-137). With the
exception of the sunken floored building in Level 4, Levels 1-8 were dominated exclusively by
post-and-wattle structures, with Type 1 houses fronting the street, and Type 2 generally to
the rear. The sunken floored building measured 5.2m by. 4.3m, and its two storeys had
roughly the same floor space of a Type 1 structure.
Substantial sill-beam timber-built houses gradually replaced post-and-wattle structures as the
primary building type from Level 9 in Peter Street (mid/late-twelfth century). Although the
sill-beam buildings were far more robustly built, they did not occupy a ground-floor area
significantly larger than the post-and-wattle structures (Scully & McCuthcheon 1997, 106).
Stone-footed buildings were first used in Level 11 (late-twelfth/early-thirteenth century).
Fig. 305: Level 1 (mid-eleventh century) house plots on Peter Street, Waterford (after Hurley
et al. 1997, 55).
Two sunken floored buildings were excavated at Level 4 (late-eleventh/early-twelfth century)
adjacent to Olaf Street (McCutcheon 1997a, 137-41). The sunken buildings were occupied in
Levels 4 and 5 and backfilled in Level 6 or possibly 7. The backyards of these houses were
estimated to extend westwards to another sunken-floored building in High Street. The
proximity of these three sunken floored buildings indicates that they may have shared a
common yard.
A series of excavations also yielded considerable, albeit fragmentary, evidence for
Scandinavian type structures and plots fronting onto High Street, to the north of Peter Street.
At least fourteen plots were uncovered in a series of excavations adjacent to High Street, of
which only eight contained definite structural evidence (McCutcheon 1997a, 142). The
684