House — medieval in Waterford City

The front of the plots on the S side of High St. had been destroyed by 18th- and 19th-century basements in a strip 10m deep along the street front, but excavation sections taken from beneath High St. suggest that there were fourteen plots with houses of Dublin Type 1 fronting on to the street. The rear of these plots had been disturbed by post-medieval pits and an attempt to level the ground surface, but the remains of structures were recovered at the back of eight plots (D of stratigraphy c. 0.5m). The material dated generally from the late 11th/early 12th century (Level 4) to the late 12th/early 13th century (Level 11) and consisted of four Dublin Type 2 buildings, two houses of sill-beam construction, one sunken house close to similar houses on Olaf St., and one timber house (dims. c. 10m N-S; c. 4.4m E-W) of which only a fragment of the E wall (L 4.6m) survived with large uprights and vertical staves. (McCutcheon 1997a, 141-49) McCutcheon, S. (1997a) Section 6 (iv) 'Catalogue of houses (b) Olaf Street, High Street and Arundel Square'in M. Hurley et al., Viking age and medieval Waterford: excavations 1986-1992, 137-54. The above description is derived from the published 'Archaeological Inventory of County Waterford' (Dublin: Stationery Office, 1999). In certain instances the entries have been revised and updated in the light of recent research. Date of upload/revision: 23 December 2008