Re: Re: Thomas Street & James Street, Dublin!

@gunter wrote:

These are ten other points I’d like to see feature in any archaeological report on Thomas Street

These are great ideas. Rather than erecting ten more information signs down Cornmarket and James’ Street (there are five at the moment I believe), perhaps it could be interesting for DCC to create a leaflet, available in Tourist Offices, which describes the history of everything you set out below. I wonder if Guinness’/Diego would be interested in funding it? The problem in erecting information signs about the ‘ten most historically important sites’, is that it involves selecting one type of site/period, above another, and defining that as the important thing, whereas in reality every bit of Thomas Street and James’ Street has changed as it evolved over time.

@gunter wrote:

2. Record, and possibly mark with a structure/sculpture, the location of the ‘city water conduit’ in Cornmarket, as depicted by Speed.

Do you mean Jean Decer’s Fountain (1308) at the West end of High Street? I don’t think Speed marks any other water features in the Cornmarket area, nor does he mark the City Conduit/Aqueduct, which ran along the northern side of Thomas Street. The City Cistern was probably located behind the Guinness Buildings on James’ Street at St. James’ Basin. The City Watercourse ran from the Tongue Mount Argus north towards the basin, and fed the cistern.

@gunter wrote:

4. Carry out a detailed survey and inventory of the substantial medieval remains on the Chadwick’s site and devise a strategy for the conservation, explanation and presentation of these structures, including the west façade of the refectory? building embedded in the party wall to Kennedy’s pub.

This is very interesting; I will have to look into it, though it falls outside the scope of this study. The National Monuments Service files note a ‘dwelling’ at this location (Recorded Monument DU018-020-556), but I had no idea there was a lot of upstanding medieval fabric.