Abstract
In this chapter we introduce our study of ten assemblages recovered from cesspit backfills in nine houses on the Cumberland and Gloucester Streets site (CUGL), The Rocks, Sydney. We review each dwelling’s form and layout, the location and construction of the cesspit or feature, the nature and date of the backfill and then provide brief biographical accounts of the occupants most likely to be associated with the assemblages. We touch on many well-known Rocks families and familiar challenges of linking archaeological deposits to them.
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Notes
- 1.
118 context groups have more than 500 fragments, 310 had more than 100 fragments. MC B075, one of the many ‘underfloor deposits’ from 5 Carahers Lane, had 55,366 individual fragments.
- 2.
On the preliminary trigonometric survey of 1857 prepared for the planning of the sewer mains (Fig. 7.1), the cesspits were shown against the rear yard fence, but in 1865, these appear only as a faint outline, suggesting that they had been removed or had been incorrectly drawn (Fig. 7.2). At the time of demolition, the water closets are shown to be in the same location as the cesspits (Fig. 8.5). There was no evidence for a pit elsewhere in the yard of 1 Carahers Lane, but note the yard was only partly excavated (The Cumberland/Gloucester Streets Site, The Rocks: Archaeological Investigation Report 1996, vol. 6 Plan 199). If the survey is correct, it is possible that an earlier cesspit was constructed (perhaps in 1848?) and superseded in the late 1850s with the new pit adjacent to the house.
- 3.
A similar sequence of events occurred at 97 Gloucester Street, across the laneway, and also owned by William Massey and family.
- 4.
7–11 Carahers Lane survived within the boundaries Cumberland and Gloucester Streets site, but were not excavated in 1994 (Holmes 1999a: 91).
- 5.
It is referred to as a Master Context (MC A138) for consistency.
- 6.
A specialist of the book trades who ruled lines on a page aided by a machine.
- 7.
John was initially named as the member crew aboard the whaler the Harmony who committed mutiny against the captain but was not on the list of crew members found guilty and later pardoned (Sydney Monitor, 16 Jun. 1832: 2).
- 8.
He also built an adjacent building to the south of 97 Gloucester Street, known as the Bird in Hand (99 Gloucester Street), between 1817 and 1823.
- 9.
A small conjoining sherd (63230) was recovered from the clean-up deposit C066.
- 10.
C239, C387 and C397 were determined ‘Priority B’ contexts, and ceramic and glass from these deposits were bulk bagged. These bulk bags (40948, 40950, 40926) were briefly examined in August 2003 but were not sorted and catalogued.
- 11.
One of Emily’s daughters, Charlotte Ann, married John Hines – who was born at No. 101 – in 1898.
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Murray, T., Crook, P. (2019). The Cumberland and Gloucester Streets Site, The Rocks, Sydney. In: Exploring the Archaeology of the Modern City in Nineteenth-century Australia. Contributions To Global Historical Archaeology. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-27169-5_8
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