County: Cork Site name: SHERKIN ISLAND FRIARY, Farranacoush
Sites and Monuments Record No.: SMR 149:19(2) Licence number: —
Author: Ann Lynch, Office of Public Works, Dublin
Site type: Religious house - Franciscan friars
Period/Dating: Late Medieval (AD 1100-AD 1599)
ITM: E 502077m, N 526529m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 51.482919, -9.409917
Conservation works have been in progress at this 15th century Franciscan friary since 1986 and a second season's excavation was carried out in April 1990 (see also Excavations 1987, 11). Work was concentrated in two areas, the chapter room and the cloister walks or ambulatories.
The Chapter Room
The vaulted apartment immediately north of the original sacristy will eventually provide the main visitor access to the monument and consequently the floor surface needed to be reduced to its original level.
The remnants of at least three separate floor surfaces were identified. The earliest was a clay floor which rested on natural sands and decayed bedrock and which was coeval with the construction of the stone fireplace with flagged hearth. Miscellaneous features such as stakeholes and a shallow drainage (?) gully had been cut into the clay floor and various deposits of charcoal, ash, mortar and redeposited clays had accumulated on its surface. A cobbled floor had been laid on these deposits and new hearth-stones laid in the partly filled-in fireplace. A disturbed human burial uncovered in the south-west corner of the room belongs to this phase. Finally, a deposit of black humic soil up to 0.25m in depth was spread throughout the room to provide a level surface for the final cobbled floor. The fireplace had gone out of use at this stage. Dating the individual floors is problematical but the clay floor is unlikely to be earlier than the 16th/17th century.
The Cloister Walks
Rubble and clay had accumulated over the centuries in the open space, site of the cloister garth and ambulatories. It was decided that for ease of visitor access and to aid the final presentation of the monument, the ambulatories should be excavated to their original surface. The cloister arcade wall was uncovered with at least one episode of rebuilding apparent. The outer face of the later wall was heavily plastered and a stone-lined socket had survived on both the north-east and north-west corners. These sockets, together with the absence of stone arcading from the site as a whole, suggest a possible wooden arcade supporting the lean-to roofs of the ambulatories.
Drains featured prominently as in the 1987 excavations. A large stone-built drain (late 15th- early 16th-century) ran north-south abutting the east range wall and fed into an east-west drain which runs under the refectory in the north range. The floor levels of the sacristy and chapter room in the east range were considerably lower than the cloister garth and ambulatories, hence the need for a drain to divert surface water northwards. A smaller stone-built drain (15th century) also ran north-eastward from under the north-east corner of the arcade wall.
An unexpected feature was the presence of burials in the north, east and south ambulatories (the west ambulatory was not fully excavated). The burials, which belong to the monastic period, were all simple grave pits and without grave goods. Modern burials are confined to within the friary church. As far as could be determined the actual walking surface if the ambulatories consisted of compacted clay.
The bulk of the finds consisted of roofing material (slates and ceramic ridge tiles) from the domestic ranges, and post-medieval ceramics with North Devon gravel-tempered wares predominating.
