1996:103 - DUBLIN: May Lane/Bow Street, Dublin

A site assessment was carried out in the carpark area of the site to the immediate north of St Michan’s Church during the weekend of 27/28 July 1996. Four of the five engineer’s pits were located, reopened and rebottomed to natural, and three long trenches were machine-cut.

Backfilled basements were located running parallel to May Lane and had cut through into the natural gravel. Elsewhere on site, and underlying a seventeenth-century context, a brick-free brown/grey clay layer was uncovered which was densely packed with human skeletal remains (any disturbed bone was removed for safe keeping). In the case of the newly cut test-trenches, once such material was encountered further excavation was halted.

Combining the results from the long trenches and the bottomed engineer’s test-pits, it can be deduced that human skeletal remains were uncovered at a depth of around 0.4—0.5m below ground level (4.99m OD) and continued for a depth of 1.6m (6.59m OD), where they ultimately overlay the natural gravels. From a very limited assessment—upstanding buildings were encountered across the site—it is obvious that human burials were taking place well beyond the existing St Michan’s graveyard wall of today. Trenching close to the current graveyard wall did not reveal an earlier wall or ditch demarcating the medieval ecclesiastical precinct, suggesting that the original boundary lies closer to the modern May Lane; unfortunately basements had removed any surviving archaeology in the trench tested there. The skeletal remains uncovered underlay a seventeenth-century context and themselves date from at least the late medieval period. It is likely, therefore, that the original graveyard—and hence ecclesiastical precinct—was much more extensive than suggested by present-day boundaries.

Power House, Pigeon House Harbour, Dublin 4