Archaeology Notes

Event ID 673375

Category Descriptive Accounts

Type Archaeology Notes

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/673375

NS66SW 946 6035 6488 (centre)

A desk-based assessment and evaluation excavations were undertaken in January 2003 on the site of the 1796 'Napoleonic' Infantry Barracks, which is also the site of Maxwell's Auld Pighoose Pottery (1722 and earlier) and possibly the site of Hyndshaw's Claypipe Factory - although no trace of the latter was found. The site, bounded by Gallowgate, Barrack Street and Hunter Street, was heavily truncated by railway goods yards from 1889 onwards. The Barracks have largely been removed by the railway activities, but embankments of the old ground surfaces survive along the length of the E and W sides of the site for approximately 3m in width, and lie up against the site enclosure walls which are the 1795 Barrack walls with various modifications.

The foundations of the outer wall of the E block survive, along with the armouries and a large brick drain on the E, and a cobbled surface overlying a brick installation of an earlier phase survives in the W. At the SW corner of the site on the Gallowgate street frontage, deposits associated with the Barracks, Pighoose and also a possible brickworks survive under the 19th-century cobbled rail yard surface. A dump of ceramic wasters, including drainpipes and rims and bases for storage jars and jugs (pigs), was located 1.8m below the present ground surface and in the water table. A 1792 feu map identifies the findspot as within the Auld Pighoose Pottery and adjacent to a brickfield, and it is likely that there is good survival of the early 18th-century occupation levels in the SW quadrant of the site, which is c 2m higher than the Gallowgate street level.

At the NW corner of the site at Hunter Street corner, a curving 'embankment' is all that survives of the pre-1890s ground surface which has been removed to a depth of 5m. The map evidence indicates a kiln on this site, and prior to detailed map research this kiln was suspected of being the Pighoose Pottery, and indeed it may be part of it or another pottery or a brick and tile kiln. In the limited trenching on the pre-1890s ground surface it was found to be heavily disturbed by 20th-century activity, but green-glazed post-medieval reduced ware waster sherds were also recovered, including a jug neck, handle and base, as well as a fragment of a sagger.

Report lodged with WoSAS SMR.

Sponsor: GWM Developments Ltd.

F Baker 2004