2008:209 - CORK: St Paul’s Graveyard, Paul Street, Cork

A large shopping centre is under construction at Cornmarket Street in the centre of Cork city. The site is located c. 25m east of the medieval core of the city and within the zone of archaeological potential for Cork city (CO074–122). The site comprises a large area to the east side of Cornmarket Street and incorporates the former St Paul’s Church (CO074–
035(02)) and associated graveyard (CO074–035(01)) on Paul Street. Monitoring of groundworks in the graveyard area of the site was carried out in June and July 2008 and noted that all of the soils excavated were either introduced (in the raised graveyard area to the east) or very disturbed. A large part of the western side of the graveyard was levelled in the 1970s for a carpark. The soils removed contained a large amount of disarticulated human remains, brick and stone rubble, and some coffin furniture. Deposits of stony rubble, built up against the south face of the church to raise ground levels, contained a number of headstone fragments likely to have been debris from the ground reduction of the churchyard in the past. Three grave slabs were noted within the soils. All remain in situ beneath the landscaped churchyard. Four subsurface vaulted brick tombs were noted during monitoring. Two were faced with stone. Three of these brick vaults extended south in a line against the eastern boundary wall of the graveyard from the face of the church. The fourth vault was located to the south of the western doorway to the church and had a splayed stone entranceway with a cast iron gate.