A midden is simply a dump, an accumulation of domestic and occupational waste, and the one uncovered here turned out to be remarkable less for what it contained than for how much of it survived, and how deep.

Excavations carried out in 1995, under licence number 95E0211, at the rear of properties fronting O'Connell Street and running towards the riverfront revealed an extensive medieval organic deposit sitting between 2.5 and 4.7 metres below the modern ground surface. The deposit was rich in plant material, food remains, animal bone, twigs and small branches, fragments of oyster shell, and occasional hazelnut shells. Among the more evocative finds were several fragments of shoe and boot leather, the worn-out footwear of people going about their lives in a medieval Irish town. Twenty-four sherds of medieval pottery were also recovered. The whole accumulation sat inside the line of the town wall, tucked behind the plots fronting the main medieval street, which is precisely where you would expect a community to dispose of its waste, out of sight but close to hand.

What makes this deposit genuinely interesting is what it says about preservation. Organic material, the kind of everyday evidence that usually rots away entirely, survived here because of the deposit's high humic content and the particular conditions of the waterlogged ground near the riverfront. The oyster shells point to dietary habits that connected this inland town to coastal trade networks. The leather scraps suggest a local economy that included cobbling or leatherworking. None of it is glamorous, but together it amounts to a rare and unusually legible picture of the mundane rhythms of medieval urban life in Tipperary.