Excavation

Testing of a proposed development site by Miriam Carroll under licence No. 04E0678 at Lord Edward Street, Kilmallock, was carried out. The proposed development consisted of the construction of a retail unit, eight houses and the conversion of existing buildings associated with a 19th-century bottling factory into four houses. The suspected line of the medieval town wall forms the west boundary of the site, although no above-ground remains of this wall are now visible. The development area lies immediately to the east of and outside the line of the town wall but is within the constraint zone for Kilmallock town (SMR 47:22). Ten test-trenches were excavated on the site within the footprint of the proposed buildings. A number of potential archaeological features were uncovered. The main feature identified in several trenches was a possible mural ditch, which appeared to extend outside of and roughly parallel with the line of the town wall. Portions of this possible ditch were uncovered in at least four of the ten trenches excavated and showed it to extend for a length of c. 34m through the site. No datable finds were recovered from the ditch. Two pits and several smaller linear features were uncovered throughout the site, primarily to the east of the possible mural ditch. A lack of finds from these features makes it difficult to assign them to any particular period but attests to the use of the land immediately outside the town wall, perhaps in the medieval or early post-medieval period' (www.excavations.ie).