County: Armagh Site name: ARMAGH: Scotch Street
Sites and Monuments Record No.: N/A Licence number: —
Author: C. J. Lynn, Department of the Environment, Northern Ireland
Site type: Graveyard
Period/Dating: Medieval (AD 400-AD 1600)
ITM: E 687657m, N 845105m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 54.347088, -6.651751
Site of Jackson Allen’s shop, March 1976. About 150m E of the previous site (Excavations 1975, Site 6). Excavations revealed part of an ancient graveyard. Ten burials were found lying in two orderly rows and aligned facing E. The neat arrangement indicates a formal graveyard; some of the interments were only 30cm below the former shop floor, the upper layers, if any, having been removed during its construction. Some of the burials were inserted into very narrow slit-graves with the result that the bodies lay on their sides; others were buried in what appear to have been rough-hewn oak coffins. No finds were associated with these graves but a late medieval drain running W-E from the direction of the previous site (perhaps to help drain the lake noted above) cut through the burials, apparently oblivious to their existence. The burials are presumably to be associated with some early phase of the use of the site of na Ferta (see next site).
