- Butterfield, Co. Dublin, Dublin

In October 1950 human remains were discovered during construction work at a site in the grounds of a house called ‘Glen Imaal’ in the townland of Butterfield, Rathfarnham, Co. Dublin.³⁵ The remains were noticed in the foundation trenches. The find was reported to the National Museum and an investigation was undertaken by A.T. Lucas. The site was very disturbed and it was not possible to recover even one complete individual. The burials (1953:59) occurred at a depth of 0.38–0.45m below ground level. A deep, black, loose humus overlay the bodies, which, in some cases, rested on the underlying stratum of yellow clay. No breaks in the continuity of the humus were visible. In the eastern trench the bodies appeared to have been buried at intervals of approximately 0.6m, extended with the heads to the west. In nearby trenches, however, it is reported that the burials were not laid out with such regularity, and according to Lucas in at least one case bodies lay across each other at right angles. According to Lucas, there was no evidence for structural stones around the grave, or for any grave-goods with the burials. He does, however, mention the presence of a ‘few fairly large stones’ at the site. In 1997, excavations at the Old Orchard Inn, Butterfield Avenue, by Judith Carroll (Carroll 1998) revealed three phases of activity and some 200 burials post-dating an early medieval enclosure. The burials were in turn post-dated by an occupation phase that was dated to the late twelfth/early thirteenth century. Given that Carroll’s investigation uncovered earmuff stones and other stones placed around the head, it is possible that the stones that Lucas mentions had a similar function, and that the burials investigated by Lucas were of similar date to those excavated by Carroll. Stout and Stout (2009, 162) list the enclosure at Butterfield in their list of secular cemeteries in north-east Leinster.

35. Parish of Rathfarnham, barony of Rathdown. OS 6in. sheet 22. The exact location is not marked but the burials found here are probably associated with DU022-038——, IGR 313404 228431, which is listed as a mass burial site/ecclesiastical structure.