2025:656 - Crosse's Green, Gillabbey, Cork, Cork

The Beamish and Crawford Quarter Infrastructure development is a public realm improvement scheme located in the southwest of the City Centre Island, linking the city’s medieval spine with the established commercial core of the City Centre island. The proposed development is located within “Beamish and Crawford/Grand Parade Quarter”, the redevelopment of which is identified in the Cork City Development Plan as Objective 10.14.

One of the objectives of this project is to provide two new pedestrian bridges linking Crosses’ Green to Lamley’s Lane and French’s Quay to the site for the New Event Centre. The portion of works at the Beamish and Crawford site, South Main Street, which lie to the west and south of the River Lee, and in proximity to previously identified human remains, are being completed under a Section 26 Licence to Excavate.

Monitoring of construction works, mainly service access ducts, was undertaken in the south-west of Cork city centre, French’s Quay, Crosses’ Green Quay, Crosse’s Green, Proby’s Quay and Bishop’s Street on the southern side of the River Lee has identified that the entire area has been raised in height, with excavation trenches rarely penetrating through early modern century infill layers. This raising of ground levels was particularly evident at the junction with Crosse’s Green and French’s Quay, where the road level has been raised to unnoticeably rise over the river culvert. Early maps show a bridge at this location, even maps such as the 1585-1600 Pacata Hibernia map and 1690 City of Cork map , indicating that this was the access point across the River Lee channel to the Dominican Priory. The 6-inch OS map of 1843 and 1870 map shows that the channel was still open at this time, with it visibly running along Proby’s Quay—likely utilised by the tannery and St Dominick’s Steam Mills. However, it appears that this was covered over along Proby’s Quay, and the modern river culvert installed, sometime before 1893, as Guy’s map of Cork would suggest, and it is not visible on the 25-inch OS map of 1902. No features or deposits related to activity the before 18^th century were identified and there was no trace of the Dominican Priory.

Two finds of disarticulated human bone were recovered. From the top of a silt layer, at the eastern end of Crosse’s Green were two leg bones, while a disarticulated human bone was recovered from infill layers towards the west of the street. TVAS Ireland, in their 2023 excavation, demonstrated that inhumations, including stone-lined graves, are present to the west, and the excavation by O’Rourke in 2007 recovered 166 burials from the car park on the northern side of Crosse’s Green. It is possible that the graveyard does not extend to the eastern end of Crosse’s Green itself, as this was the main route to the priory from the city, or that trenches excavated during these works did not penetrate deep enough to impact upon any articulated human remains.