Building, Burgagery-Lands, Co. Tipperary
Co. Tipperary |
Utility Structures
Beneath the floor of a Tipperary town street, a length of medieval masonry sits at an angle to everything built above it.
Discovered during limited archaeological excavations at 68/69 O'Connell Street, the wall follows its own logic, older than the building that would later be constructed over it and out of alignment with it entirely.
The excavation, carried out under licence in 2000, uncovered rectangular stone blocks of varying sizes, the largest measuring approximately 0.4 metres by 0.4 metres. Whether this wall once formed part of a medieval building or simply marked a property boundary is not certain. Burgagery lands, in a medieval Irish town context, were plots of land held by burgesses, the merchants and tradespeople who formed the commercial backbone of a settlement, and boundary walls between such plots were common features of urban organisation. That this wall does not align with what stands above it suggests the town's street plan and property lines shifted at some point across the centuries, leaving the earlier structure slightly askew beneath the newer one.