Structure, Limerick City, Co. Limerick

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Utility Structures

Structure, Limerick City, Co. Limerick

A coin of James II buried in rubble, the ghost of a fire that destroyed a wattle and daub building, and a kiln whose purpose nobody has been able to determine: these are the quiet discoveries that came out of a relatively small patch of ground at the corner of John Street and Davitt Street in Limerick City, when archaeologist Brian Hodkinson led excavations there in 1987 ahead of redevelopment.

The plot measured roughly eight metres along John Street by twenty-one metres in depth, and what it revealed was less a dramatic sequence of buildings than a layered record of ordinary urban life, most of it frustratingly incomplete.

The medieval period, it turned out, left almost no built trace here. A single hearth sat directly on the natural clay, and scattered pits of uncertain function were the extent of it. The grey-brown silty clay that blanketed the whole area, combined with the absence of structural remains, led the excavators to conclude that this corner of medieval Limerick was probably used as garden or back-yard ground, the kind of space that rarely announces itself in the archaeological record. Pottery, both locally made and imported, along with animal bone, were the main finds from this phase. The seventeenth century was more eventful. At least one wattle and daub structure, a building technique using interwoven branches or rods packed with clay or daub, had stood on the site before being destroyed by fire. Nearby, the flue of a kiln was uncovered, though its chamber had been cut away by later cellaring. A shallow pit at the kiln's mouth appeared to belong to the same phase of use, suggesting the two features functioned together, though for what purpose the evidence could not say. Among the demolition debris of the kiln, a coin of James II came to light, giving the destruction of that structure at least a loose date in the late seventeenth century.

The site itself is long since built over, and there is nothing visible on the ground today to mark what lies beneath the corner of John Street and Davitt Street. The value here is in the record rather than the remains. The excavation report, summarised through the excavations.ie database, offers the kind of granular urban detail that rarely makes it into broader histories of the city, a reminder that Limerick's past is preserved in increments, one small trench at a time.

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