County: Dublin Site name: DONNYBROOK: St Mary's, Brookvale Rd
Sites and Monuments Record No.: N/A Licence number: 95E0116
Author: Cia McConway, ADS Ltd
Site type: Ecclesiastical enclosure
Period/Dating: Late Medieval (AD 1100-AD 1599)
ITM: E 717225m, N 732026m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 53.325501, -6.240284
A new development was to be built within an archaeologically sensitive area known to contain a medieval castle, a graveyard and an Early Christian enclosure. Monitoring of all the foundation trenches (45 in total) was carried out throughout June.
The northern area of the site had already been badly disturbed by a network of sewage-pipes and service lines which criss-crossed the area. The trenches here were fairly shallow, only 0.5m deep, and so only cut into a rubbly material, post-medieval in date. The natural was not reached here.
Elsewhere the site was cut through by numerous old foundation walls which in turn necessitated deeper foundation trenches to be cut. However, small pockets of intact stratigraphy remained between the various old foundation walls and were recorded. An almost continuous layer of loose dark 'garden soil', free of red brick and mortar, underlay the red brick rubble infill and overlay the natural subsoil.
In the south-west corner of the site, a curvilinear feature 1.2m wide and 0.3m + deep was recorded in the section faces of a succession of trenches. It apparently formed a subcircular feature c. 12m in diameter. This gully—or small enclosure—was immediately overlain and sealed by the garden soil material. It cut through the natural subsoil and had a fill of compact black/grey stone-free clay, packed with crushed shells and discrete lumps of charcoal. There was no indication of an associated bank and nothing datable was retrieved from the fill.
The function of this gully/enclosure is unclear - it may have been used as a small enclosure for holding livestock or it may represent a land boundary (though its tightly curved shape would suggest that this is unlikely). It was not clear whether the full depth of the gully had survived or whether it had been truncated in the past by the process of landscaping and gardening.
The gully is provided with a terminus ante quem by the garden soil. This was consistently clean, free from red brick and mortar, suggesting a date of not later than the late medieval period. From this, then, a date from the 16th century or earlier may be deducted for the gully, a date in keeping with the medieval landscape known in this area.
Power House, Pigeon House Harbour, Dublin 4
