1977-79:084 - ARMAGH CITY: No. 39-41 Scotch Street, Armagh

It was hoped that excavations of this extensive site would reveal further traces of the Early Christian period cemetery and medieval church site of Temple na Ferta. Large areas were found to be badly disturbed by 19th-century pits and wall-foundations, and further damage occurred during recent clearance. The earliest feature recognised was a slightly pear-shaped penannular gully or ring-ditch, the entrance gap being 75cm wide at the surface. The very regularly-cut gully averaged 11m in diameter internally, 1m deep and 1.7m wide. It was asymmetrically V-shaped in section, less steep on the outer side which was extremely difficult to trace with confidence. The feature contained large portions of several broad-rimmed decorated vessels, flint hollow-scrapers and a lozenge-shaped arrowhead. A few sherds of Carrowkeel Ware came from the upper fill and occasional sherds of plain bowls were scattered throughout the fill. Apart from some stakeholes at the inner edge of the gully and in its fill no prehistoric features or finds were recognised. A series of orientated inhumations was cut into subsoil. These graves may well relate to those found earlier at the adjacent site (No. 43, Excavations 1976). They were very shallow, some showing merely as smears of bone immediately under the bulldozed shop floors, others a little deeper retained possible traces of wooden linings or coffins. The burials were more dense at the S, beside the street, and faded out in a roughly NW-SE area across the middle of the site. No burials were found in the NE area and there was no sign of a ditch or other boundary mark. The NE area was covered with extensive but enigmatic traces of a workshop area of the Early Christian period. Five shallow, gradually curving gullies and a complex of postholes and stakeholes were associated with many finds of waste from the manufacturing of lignite ‘armlets’ and amber beads. Sticks of glass testified to the manufacture of decorated beads, and crucibles to bronze casting. These features partly overlay the graveyard to the SW and became more concentrated to the E where a range of derelict buildings now stands. Finally, a few large pits of medieval date were also recognised. Excavation of a small site directly across the narrow street, No. 46, began in December 1979; further Early Christian burials and other, enigmatic, features are being revealed. Sufficient survived of one oak coffin to provide several samples for C14 determinations.