1996:102 - DUBLIN: Fyffes Yard, Mary’s Lane, Dublin

An area 12.5m x 8.5m was excavated in December 1994—January 1995 for ADS Ltd on behalf of Fyffes Plc, who proposed to level the existing loading yard as part of a general improvement of their facilities. The site was located north of the Liffey and several hundred metres to the west of the Bradogue stream, once the western boundary of St Mary’s Abbey. It therefore lies outside the grounds of the abbey but within the parish of St Michan’s, established in the eleventh century. Several streets in the locale had been mapped by the seventeenth century, and the evidence of the excavation, including copious amounts of pottery sherds, suggests thriving activity by the fourteenth century.

The natural sand and gravel beds were punctured by numerous pits and gullies containing clay fills with butchered animal bones. They included a pit containing numerous fragments of butchered deer bones, associated with sherds of Saintonge and Leinster cooking ware. A huge quantity of the latter was recovered in the sealing clay above the medieval pits, and the assemblage of evidence seems to suggest that the area was characterised by butchery and the preparation of foods.

A renewed phase of pit cuts further truncated the natural surface and the earlier pits in the late seventeenth century. There appears to be no evidence for any activity in the sixteenth century, or for most of the seventeenth century. Interestingly, a large pit with a timber drain belonging to the second phase cut directly into the large gully of the earlier phase, indicating some degree of continuity despite the lacunae. The site was left unaffected by the construction of houses all around it in modern times, hence the survival of the archaeological deposits.

Editor’s note: Although excavated in 1994—5, this report did not arrive on time for inclusion in the relevant bulletin.

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