County: Kerry Site name: SKELLIG MICHAEL, 'Monks' Garden', Great Skellig
Sites and Monuments Record No.: SMR 104A001 Licence number: 93E0195
Author: Edward Bourke, O.P.W.
Site type: Ecclesiastical enclosure
Period/Dating: Multi-period
ITM: E 424838m, N 560725m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 51.771395, -10.538216
Excavation in advance of conservation works took place over a fourteen week period between May and August 1994. The work concentrated on the Lower Monks' Garden. A large area at the eastern end of the garden was opened to facilitate conservation and reconstruction of the outer wall of the terrace. Excavation revealed that there was up to 4.5m of 19th-century collapse over this end of the garden. Much of this debris dates to the collapse of part of Saint Michael's church and the inner wall of the garden. The weight of this debris seems to have resulted in the collapse of the eastern end of the outer wall of the garden and some loss of the stratigraphy against the inner edge of the outer wall.
At the base of the cutting a large clochán and an area of stone paving was uncovered. This clochán was occupied by the lighthouse builders in the 1820s and was destroyed by the collapse. There were traces of an earlier building in the section face at the outer edge of the garden but this could not be investigated as it underlay the paving associated with the clochán.
