What is recorded here

No. 23 James Street stands twenty metres from St James's Gate in the Hightown of Kilkenny, where a shallow oval cut once held a child between three and six years old. The grave measured less than a metre long, oriented west to east, and its backfill contained redeposited soil and a tiny brick fragment rather than fresh earth. The burial was incomplete and appears to have been moved in antiquity, suggesting the child was recovered and placed again instead of lost to time. That repeated handling transforms a truncated hole into a deliberate act of remembrance beneath a modern house.

No. 23 James Street is on the corner of James’s Street and Tilbury Place 20m NW of the site of St James's Gate on the town wall (KK019-026001-) of the Hightown of Kilkenny (Farrelly et al 1993, 11; Munby and Tyler (Oxford Archaeology) 2003, 82-3). The plot is fronted by a three-storey Edwardian house (NIAH 12000035) with modern extensions to the rear. Two archaeological excavations have been carried out on the plot. As well as medieval pits and deposits (KK 019-026191-), a well (KK 019-026194-) and a furnace (KK 019-026196-), test excavations by Paul Stevens (00E0730) identified an isolated burial of a 3-6 year old child (Stevens 2000). The isolated burial, although substantially truncated by construction, was an extended child inhumation, orientated W to E within a shallow oval grave-cut (L 0.92m; Wth 0.46m; D 0.18m) (Stevens 2000). The burial was not complete and appeared to have been re-interred in antiquity (ibid.). The grave was backfilled with hard, redeposited natural that contained a tiny fragment of brick (ibid.). Compiled by: Cóilín Ó Drisceoil Date of upload: 3 November 2020

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