Building, Loughnafina, Co. Tipperary

Co. Tipperary |

Utility Structures

Building, Loughnafina, Co. Tipperary

Beneath a lane on the western edge of Cashel, a seven-metre wall was found that nobody can quite explain.

It came to light not through any planned excavation but as a side effect of infrastructure works, when a new storm and foul drainage network was being laid in and around the town between April 1998 and January 1999. Because ground disturbance of that kind in a place like Cashel carries obvious archaeological risk, a monitoring licence was in place throughout the scheme, and that caution proved worthwhile.

The wall turned up in a narrow lane running westward from the walled town, at right angles to the west of Camus Road. Measuring roughly seven metres in length and averaging about half a metre in surviving height, it was uncovered in section rather than fully exposed, meaning only a slice of it was visible in the cut earth. It is medieval in date, but beneath it lay organic deposits and surfaces that pre-dated the wall itself, pointing to an even longer sequence of activity in this unassuming spot. The excavator could not determine the wall's function with any certainty, though the suggestion was made that it may belong to a large extra-mural building, that is, a substantial structure lying outside the formal boundary of the walled medieval town. Such buildings were not unusual on the fringes of medieval urban centres, where space beyond the walls accommodated everything from religious houses to market activity, but this particular wall resists a neat identification.

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