What is recorded here

Under the rear garden of an Edwardian house on James Street, a forgotten furnace still holds heat from the Cromwellian Siege of Kilkenny. Its oval pit and narrow flue were packed with soot, clay and iron slag, yielding one musket ball. The house wall later sealed part of the throat, turning a weapons workshop into a buried room where siege fire could still be imagined.

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 burial (KK 019-026199-), test excavations by Paul Stevens (00E0730) identified a smelting furnace possibly associated with the Cromwellian Siege of Kilkenny (Stevens 2000, unpublished). The furnace pit, which was partially sealed by the gable wall of the house, was oval in plan (diam. 3m; D 0.55m), with an adjoining linear flue (L ˃1.06m; Wth 0.7m; D 0.45m) (ibid.). The furnace cut an earlier, medieval rubbish pit and was lined with boulders and filled with intermittent layers of burnt soil and silty clay (ibid.). The entire feature was backfilled with clay and soot, rich in iron slag, which produced a single musket ball (ibid.). Compiled by: Cóilín Ó Drisceoil Date of upload: 3 November 2020

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