EMAP_Progress_Reports_2009_2.pdf - The Heritage Council

Cork
property boundaries were aligned east-west to the main north-south medieval street and
were built using a variety of methods using post-and stake-holes and stave-built fences set in
base plates.
An early twelfth century stave-built fence was excavated immediately north of Tuckey Streeta
laneway situated just off the eastern side of South Main Street (O’Donnell 2003, 13-16).
The fence was probably part of an original property division as it was aligned east-west and
ran roughly along the same line as late medieval property boundaries at Christchurch (Cleary
1997, 26-100). The stave-built fence consisted of twenty vertical timber planks set in an oak
base plate. Timbers from the fence were felled sometime between A.D. 1115 and 1122.
Two possible fence/property divisions or house walls were uncovered in a small excavation at
No. 5 Barrack Street on the South Bank (Lane & Sutton 2003, 9-12). The structures were
associated with layers of compacted organic material containing late eleventh/early twelfthcentury
pottery. Two timbers from the second fence/wall produced felling dates of A.D.
1014±9 and 1061±9.
An excavation was undertaken at 11-13 Washington Street in the backyard of houses fronting
onto South Main Street (McCutcheon 2003, 45-54). The lowest twelfth-century deposits
contained an east-west earth-fast post and stave fence which may have functioned as a
boundary plot fronting onto South Main Street. Six east-west aligned stake-holes roughly
parallel to the fence were also uncovered and may represent an earlier boundary or internal
backyard division.
The Phase 2 twelfth/mid thirteenth-century deposits revealed an east-west ditch- 5m wide at
ground level, 1.2m wide at the base and 1.03m deep- containing organic inclusions, a stick
pin, iron needle, bone and shell. Two parallel east-west rows of oak staves and posts- one
row driven through the fills at the ditch edge- were also uncovered. The ditch possibly
drained the site while the two fence lines may have served as boundary divisions fronting
onto South Main Street (Fig. 68).
An excavation at the junction of South Main Street (40-48) and Old Post Office Lane adjacent
to the South Gate Bridge revealed a series of east-west Type 1 and 2 structures and possible
property divisions (Ní Loingsigh 2003 & 2005). The houses were built three deep to the east
of the main medieval street (South Main Street) and the publication of this site may shed
important light on the organization of property boundaries in Scandinavian Cork.
Another recently excavated site at 35-39 South Main Street (Kelleher 2004) uncovered
pathways, track-ways and boundary fences associated with several phases of Hiberno-
Scandinavian buildings which fronted onto the main medieval thoroughfare. One of the plot
divisions was located along the line of an earlier late eleventh/early twelfth-century timber
revetment (Kelleher 2004).
Hurley (2003c, 153) has suggested that the late medieval property boundaries in Cork may
have consisted of rows of buildings with different specific functions- residential/trade streetfronting
house, sleeping chamber middle house and a hall for dining and residential use at
the rear. Evidence for a ranking of buildings was uncovered in eleventh/twelfth-century
Waterford where Type 1 houses fronted the street with Type 2 to the rear. A similar pattern
of Type 1 and 2 houses fronting the main medieval street has been revealed at Hanover
Street/South Main Street, Cork (Cleary 2003, 31-44; Hurley 2003a, 158) and could indicate
the presence of a burgage plot.
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