Excavation

Date August 2013 - October 2013

Event ID 993785

Category Recording

Type Excavation

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/993785

NT 2638 7390 An excavation, consisting of hand dug test pits followed by machine excavation was carried out, August – October 2013, on a brownfield site at the corner of Old Tolbooth Wynd and Calton Road prior to residential development.

The work confirmed that the site had been occupied from at least the 16th century, when cartographic evidence first records activity. A poorhouse, which was built on the site in 1761, was excavated and found to contain at least two phases of construction. The poorhouse was converted for use as an epidemic hospital in the early 1870s.

The poorhouse was known to have been built over the N edge of the Canongate Cemetery, which was associated with the 17th-century Canongate Kirk to the S of the development area. The remains of six human bodies were recorded in this area. Both the cemetery and the poorhouse were built over midden material dating from the early medieval period.

Evidence for earlier agriculture activity was provided by possible rig and furrow or vegetable lines, together with the fragmentary remains of the original burgage boundaries. A midden bank and a stone wall identified over the natural subsoil suggest that the site was originally divided into three plots. The artefactual material recovered indicated that material had been dumped on the site from at least the 13th century.

Archive: RCAHMS (intended)

Funder: Places for People

Rob Engl, AOC Archaeology Group, 2013

(Source: DES)