What is recorded here

Under Kieran Street and the High Street, a small iron furnace still holds its charcoal and slag, buried since the thirteenth century when the River Nore was forced back and the freed earth became a working garden. Heat, not ornament, shaped that place: metal was drawn from ore while neighbours watched smoke rise above Kilkenny’s houses. The streets changed, the garden disappeared, and the furnace waited beneath cellars until excavation opened it again.

Medieval furnace excavated in 2002-2003 (02E1715) by Cóilín Ó Drisceoil beneath former rear yard and below ground level of cellar for late 18th/early 19th-century houses and shops at 62-3 High Street, (NIAH 12000076 and 12000075) and 76 Kieran Street (NIAH 12000077), Kilkenny (Ó Drisceoil 2004, 276-7; 2005, 265-6; 2005, 43-61; 2012, https://excavations.ie/report/2012/Kilkenny/0023413/ and unpublished report). Excavations on the site in 2002-2003 documented a series of attempts to reclaim land (KK 019-026----) in the flood-plain of the River Nore (Ó Drisceoil 2005, 43-61). One of the earliest reclamation deposits contained the partial remains of an infant skull (KK 019-026200-). Once reclamation had been achieved, probably in the 13th century, the site was used as a rear-garden for iron smelting, represented by a bowl furnace (0.6m diam.) containing 50g of iron slag and, adjacent to it, a dense layer of charcoal and ash, which probably also derived from the processing of metal on-site. Compiled by: Cóilín Ó Drisceoil Date of upload: 4 November 2020

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