House — Viking/Hiberno-Norse in Unknown Townland

Excavations inWinetavern Street in 1969-1970 revealed structural features of an early 11th-century post-and-wattle house (L6m N-S, Wth 5m (E-W). Approximately midway in the northern sidewall there was a well-preserved doorway; both door jambs were, on average, 20cm wide and 10cm thick and had a groove cut in their outer faces. The innermost of the two horizontal bands of wattlework forming the sidewalls had been slotted into the grooves. The entrance was 90cm wide and had a wooden threshold, 90cm long and 8cm wide. The receiver for a wooden pivot, on which the door swivelled, was found in position close to the inner face of the western jamb. The presence of a dowel hole bored through the thickness of each jamb suggests that originally the doorway was provided with a low board fixed on edge and running across the bottom on the inside which may have acted as a stop for the door itself. Features of a house or workshop (44/2) with walls formed of closely set timber planks came to light in the earliest habitation level on the site. In this example the main floor area, which was rectangular in shape, measuring 4.4m long and 1.6m wide, was deeply sunken below the normal ground surface of the period; it was, on average, lm below the upper surface of the boulder clay. Some of the timber planks forming the sidewalls remained to a height of 30-50cm above floor level; they varied from 17-30cm in width and 3-5cm in thickness. The long axis of the structure was orientated N-S. In the northern end-wall there was a well defined doorway, 70cm wide, which had two timber thresholds — one lying between the positions of the jambs, the other placed at a slightly lower level (7cm) immediately inside the entrance. The main threshold had been carefully made and it was provided with open mortices to accommodate the door jambs, Only one of the jambs had survived, that on the western side, and it measured 26cm wide and 5cm thick. Immediately outside the entrance, i. e. north of the doorway, there was a porch-like feature, 1m square, sloping upwards from the level of the threshold. Finds from the immediate area a bronze strap-tag of Anglo-Saxon type, a decorated needle case of Viking type, a large double-sided decorated comb, frag ments of amber, wooden barrel staves, a baked clay crucible (complete) and fragments of others (Ó Riordain, )