EMAP_Progress_Reports_2009_2.pdf - The Heritage Council

Waterford
Layers of dumped organic material accumulated rapidly outside the western (outer) side of
the stone wall contained a significant quantity of mid/late twelfth-century pottery sherds (e.g.
Ham Green, Minety-type, southeast Wiltshire and coarse cooking wares), as well as
butchered bone, horn cores and red deer antler.
Mid-Twelfth century Bank and Ditch
Settlement rapidly expanded to the west outside the line of the early/late-twelfth-century
stone wall constructed along the line of Arundel Square and Bakehouse Lane. There is
evidence that this was well underway by the mid-twelfth century when a number of houses
were found to be built above the backfilled ditch. The line of another later twelfth century
(possibly pre-Anglo-Norman) defensive bank and ditch was uncovered in a series of
excavations further west (Wren 1998, 2000, 2001 & 2002; Moran 1999). Subsequently, this
defensive ditch and bank fell out of use and was replaced in the early thirteenth century by a
new defensive wall with gate-towers.
Excavations at 9 Arundel Square (Wren 1998) uncovered the ditch and bank close to the
early thirteenth century city wall. The bank had a maximum excavated width of 7.64m but
was probably at least 1-2m wider and survived to a maximum estimated height of 1.4m
above the occupation debris. Three sherds of Ham Green cooking ware (early twelfth/midthirteenth
century) were recovered from a clay layer that may have formed part of this bank.
The bank fell out of use and was covered partly by backyard occupation debris, possibly
belonging to a second level of houses fronting onto Arundel Square. Associated with these
layers was some late-twelfth/early-thirteenth-century pottery. A defensive stone bank was
subsequently built into the clay bank, 17.5m west of the modern street frontage of Arundel
Square.
The defensive bank and ditch were uncovered in a further excavation at 17-18 Broad Street
(Moran 1999). The fills of the ditch included thirteenth/fourteenth-century pottery. The
eastern boundary of the excavated site roughly corresponds with the north-south line of the
city defences found also by Wren (1998) at 9 Arundel Square.
A series of excavations on the north side of Lady Lane between 2000-2002 uncovered the line
of a defensive bank and ditch to the west of this outer defensive ditch and bank (Wren 2000,
2001 & 2002). The site was again situated to the immediate west of the earlier twelfthcentury
defensive wall at Arundel Square and Bakehouse Lane. A drain was built through the
bank on an east–west line and presumably carried water out of the town into the ditch. The
ditch upper fills contained twelfth/fourteenth-century pottery. Substantial layers of occupation
debris were deposited within the ditch in the late twelfth to early thirteenth century. A stretch
of the early thirteenth century Anglo-Norman city wall and the remains of the Lady Lane
gate-tower were also excavated.
Part of the remains of a defensive stone wall was also uncovered by Moore (1980-84; 1983)
during his excavations at Lady Lane (Fig. 286) to the west of the line of the early/mid-twelfth
century stone wall. It extended in a north-south direction but turned and extended eastwards
parallel to the marsh of St. John’s River. He also identified a shallow (1.5m deep) north-south
broad ditch (7.0m wide) to the east of the wall as well as two east-west orientated post-and
wattle structures dated by the excavator to the twelfth century (Hurley 1997b, 10).
STREETS AND PATHWAYS
The Scandinavian town of Waterford was located within a naturally protective triangular
space flanked by the River Suir to the north and St. John’s River and marshland to the east
and south. The settlement had a west-east axis expanding westwards in the eleventh and
twelfth centuries, possibly from an original tenth-century Dún at the eastern end of the
promontory.
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