Dig Diary for November 2007

18 December 2007

We know that small-scale industries were operating on the site from the late 19th to mid 20th centuries.  Cooperages have been uncovered on both sides of MacKinlay Street.  Cooperages were where barrels, buckets and casks were made by coopers, from strips of wood fastened together with metal.  The entrance to one of the cooperages was the cobbled road leading south from Devon Street and the other was accessed from MacKinlay Street. The cooperages were located in yards surrounded by the backlots of tenements.

Cooperages were one of the many types of small-scale industrial activities taking place on site. To the northeast of Rosehill a lead-lined brick constructed storage box was found. This may have been associated with a small foundry operating in this area.

During the excavation of Area 4 on the west side of MacKinlay Street, the archaeologists found examples of tenements being repaired and rebuilt. The quality of building varies. The lower courses of tenement walls on the west side of MacKinlay Street are well preserved. The excavation team have found windows and doorways; stone flagged floors, staircases and basements.  An interesting arrangement of two spiral staircases has been discovered on the corner of MacKinlay Street and Devon Street.Unlike the spiral staircases at Rosehill, these staircases are not shown on historic maps of the site, indicating they were internal.

During machine excavating a text pit in one of the basements on the west side of MacKinlay Street we discovered a large brick culvert.  This was used as a sewer and appears to have extended through the length of Area 4. The culvert is approximately 0.8 metres in diameter.

It appears that much of the site was subject to clay extraction prior to the tenements being constructed in the mid-late 19th century.  The area was then backfilled with a make-up material on which the tenements foundations were based.  The natural clay has been reached in areas of the site, however the level of it has been reduced over much of the site.