Kirkcudbright, 62 High Street

NX65SE 231

NX 6805 5085 In April 2005, a watching brief was maintained on the redevelopment of an 18th-century building, adjacent to the 17th-century Tolbooth, and at the centre of the medieval burgh. The site occupies a narrow 8m wide strip bounded by the High Street to the N and the line of the medieval burgh wall and ditch to the S.

A 0.9m wide trench, cut to a depth of c 1.5m, for a new waste pipe was cut from the front of the property southwards through the backland and beyond to link with the main sewer. At the N end of the trench, a densely packed layer of medium/large rounded cobbles was encountered. This was an exposure of the natural 'gravel ridge' on which the N-S length of Kirkcudbright High Street is built. This forms such a hard compacted surface that walls have been observed to be constructed on top of it with little discernible evidence of a foundation trench, as was the case in the course of

the redevelopment of the existing building.

This natural surface was observed in the pipe trench extending some 20m S from the property frontage. Thereafter the section revealed a deep well-worked mixed loam over a clayey subsoil. No features were noted, except near the S end where the trench was widened to 1.5m to accommodate a manhole. Here, the trench cut through a 0.7m wide wall foundation of loosely clay-bonded angular stone rubble, resting on the clay subsoil and laid in a construction trench 0.8m deep. The surviving top level of the wall foundation was 0.6m below the modern ground surface. The southern outer edge

of the foundation was 1.2m N of the present property boundary.

The trench section between the two gave a slight indication of the beginning of slope into a ditch feature to the S. The pipe trench continued on the S side of the property boundary, but here the ground level was approximately 1m lower, probably the result of recent building activity. No clear indication of a ditch could be seen in either section of the trench.

The wall foundation encountered is almost certainly for the burgh wall or back dyke of Kirkcudbright. Excavation in 1993 at the Corby Slap site (DES 1993, 23), 200m to the E, revealed a similar feature on the S side of the burgh. Another section was excavated on the E side of the burgh at Tanpits Lane (DES 1993, 23). This is therefore the third exposure of the burgh wall, but no dating evidence has been found in any of the sections. Kirkcudbright was created a Royal Burgh in 1455, and this new status may have prompted the construction of a wall soon after. Certainly there are references to it in the account of the short English siege of 1547 when the townsfolk 'barred their gates and kept their dykes'. An encircling feature, either interpreted as a ditch or a wall, is also depicted on a English officer's sketch plan of the town, dated 1562-66.

Sponsors: Stewartry Museum, Kirkcudbright, Dumfries and

Galloway Museums Service, Dumfries and Galloway Council.

D Devereux 2005

NX65SE 231 68074 50883