Excavation — miscellaneous in Gardens (kilkenny City By., St. Patrick's Par.)

Pits excavated in burgage plots that extended 135m W from the rear of 28-29 Lower Patrick Street to the town wall. The present mid-18th-century house (NIAH 12001024) on the street frontage may incorporate earlier fabric, particularly at basement level. John Rocque's 1758 map of Kilkenny depicts a walled burgage plot extending from the rear of a substantial house-complex on Lower Patrick Street. Excavation in the rear plot by Judith Carroll (97E0468, Area 4; 98E0092, Area 7) in advance of development of the Kilkenny Ormonde Hotel and offices uncovered to the N and S of a standing garden wall pits, a NNW running stretch of palisade trench (probably a former burgage fence) that continued to the N (KK019-026255-) and linear gullies of medieval date (Carroll 1999, unpublished; 2000, 118-20; 2000, 121-3; 2002, unpublished). The excavator suggested the NNW stretch of the palisade trench may have acted to define the rear (W) of the medieval burgage plots that ran off of Lower Patrick Street, with the area between it and the town wall being open commonage (Carroll 2002, unpublished, 36). Archaeological features in the rear of No. 29 were preserved in situ beneath geotextile. Compiled by: Cóilín Ó Drisceoil Date of upload: 14 December 2020