2016:878 - St James' Campus, New Children's Hospital, Dublin 8, Dublin

Four pits containing timbers were found in Trench 33 during test excavations on the site for the new Children’s Hospital at the western end of the campus of St James’s Hospital (Excavation Licence No. 16E0408), located immediately to the south of the Roman Catholic chapel of the Auxiliary Workhouse, built circa 1904. These pits were subsequently excavated during October and November 2016 under excavation licence no. 16E0621.

The four pits formed the corners of a rectangle 5.5m x 3.5m. The average dimensions of the pits were 1.1m x 0.5m in diameter and 0.5m in depth. Each pit contained two short planks laid horizontally on edge, 0.1m apart; the northern one higher than the southern. In one case, the base of a horizontal post, rectangular in section, 0.12m x 0.08m, was found between them. In the other three cases, the planks bore traces of having been nailed to a similar post. The finds from the pits were consistent with a 19th- to 20th-century date.

These pits would have been in what was probably a grassed-over part of the churchyard, on the south side of the church. They probably served as a foundation for a simple wooden structure, perhaps a shelter or seating area for a specific event.