Sir, - I can sympathise with much of Adrian Kenny's letter (The Irish Times, March 9th). The trouble with urban excavation is that for completeness of information it is essential to dig down layer by layer to the lowest or earliest evidence on the site. Once the various layers are properly excavated, sampled and fully recorded the site is cleared (or in that horrible jargon word beloved of developers and some archaeologists, "resolved") for development. Any developer using a viewing platform and story-boards has to be complimented. In fairness to Dublin Corporation we did all this in the last year or so at Wood Quay, Fishamble Street.
In my view Mr Kenny's most significant point relates to the renaming of parts of the old city. Street and feature names betray the history and relative antiquities of the areas in which they occur. Names are as sacred in their way as the archaeology and history of the urban features they describe. Temple Bar Properties is wrong to call the area west of the Poddle (Parliament Street/Essex Street) the West End, especially when this was the east end of the Viking town, as their own excavations have shown. Incidentally the "West End" of London, which I presume they are trying to copy in Dublin, does lie at the west end of the old Anglo-Saxon town (centred on Aldwych = Old Town). By the same token TBP is also wrong in calling the Essex Street West excavations Temple Bar West. Officially and cartographically there is and never was such a place.
It is normal European archaeological practice to name urban sites after the streets or lanes on which they front. To do otherwise is to mislead and to confuse especially foreign users of what is otherwise a most valuable preliminary summary of the findings. To have changed my references to Essex Street West in the publication without consultation after I had agreed corrected the proofs was unfair and totally unnecessary. In future references to this site in any Irish or foreign publication, I will be styling this site Essex Street West and would urge other archaeologists including the site excavator to do likewise.
Finally, we can't be sure that the early rectangular house is "AngloSaxon". While it makes good copy, it is in my opinion unwise to apply ethnic ascriptions to such general areas of material culture as buildings. This especially applies to early medieval buildings which were of rectangular form throughout the Germanic world - Scandinavian, Germany and England all included! - Yours, etc., Patrick F. Wallace,
Pembroke Lane, Dublin 4.