1997:201 - GALWAY: The Franciscan Priory, Francis St., Galway

Excavation and monitoring of demolition work in advance of rebuilding took place at the Franciscan Priory, Francis Street, Galway. The demolition of a 19th- and 20th-century segment of a building adjoining the main former accommodation block of the priory necessitated its recording and supervised removal. The stone portions of these buildings had previously been rendered. The removal of the render and the demolition work led to the recovery of many worked pieces of limestone. Among these were portions of 15th/16th-century moulded blocks, some late 13th-century transitional mouldings and a base block of a door or tomb of the same period. Other fragments included several post-medieval kerbstones which had been reused as building stones in the 19th century, along with 19th-century capping stones, ashlar, red and yellow brick.

Excavation took place in three areas within and without the priory buildings.

Area 1
Area 1 was located in the yard to the rear of the 19th/20th-century building which was mainly a garden. It was excavated down to gravels at a depth of almost 3m. Beneath the rockery was a layer of builder's rubble, including moulded mortar and 19th-century fragments of rilled ashlar. An extensive midden and various ash spreads containing 19th- or early 20th-century material was found. Below this was further 19th-century midden material, mainly confined against the boundary wall with the adjoining premises. Rubble with mortar and stone, including a late 16th/17th-century sparrow-pocked door fragment, was found at a slightly deeper level. Near the centre of the cutting were remnants of a wall which was set on a deep, widely spread bed of lime mortar. Excavation of this feature produced yellow brick beneath the level of the wall. In the south-west corner of the cutting a deep trench filled with demolition rubble was found. This produced cut stone of various dates, some of it 13th-century moulded work, but also red and yellow brick and later ashlar. This dump of material also produced an undecorated medieval glazed tile.

The boundary wall with the adjoining house on the northern side of the cutting was set on a rough plinth or retaining edging of stone at its base. This contained some crudely worked stone. Beneath this was a stony earth layer and beneath that again two layers of dark silt with between them a layer of lighter brown-yellow silt. Wedged into the layer between the silts was a large architectural fragment with an ogival moulding, perhaps a door fragment of 13th-century date. A small cross on one of its bedded surfaces may have been a positioning mark or a mason's mark. Below the silted layers was an irregular and rough 'causeway', some 1.4m in maximum width and consisting of angular limestone with some large blocks as a rough edging. On either side of this was gravel and small stones set in riverine muds. All the silt and mud layers contained animal bone, shell and some pottery, most of which was 17th- to 19th-century in date, including pieces of 17th-century Spanish olive jar and other fragments. The overall impression was one of infill being thrown down into the bed of a river or stream.

The 'causeway' seems to have been laid down in a stream bed. On either side of it was further stone embedded in riverine silt. This may have been artificial or natural and included both gravels and somewhat angular but worn stones. Beneath and in it were post-medieval pottery and animal bone, as well as oyster shells and other domestic refuse. It seems likely that the architectural fragments and rubble, including medieval stone mixed with post-medieval brick, were all dumped at the site. A 17th-century clay pipe with a 'B' or crown came from the trench filled with builders' rubble in the south-west face of the cutting. A Spanish olive jar of 17th-century type came from the lower silted layers.

Area 2
This was located in the corner of the yard to the rear of the priory. Beneath the tarmacadam was a fill of rubble and stone, with some mortar, garden soil, layers of ash and mortar with broken slates. A fragment of a late 18th- or early 19th-century graveslab was also found in the upper rubble fill.

Below the rubble was an irregular spread of crude cobbles and two stone-lined drains, one of which ran in a south-west direction into a gap between a priory building of 1820 and a more modern building. The fill of this drain produced a grey, silty deposit but no finds. It was partly built with yellow brick and old roofing slates, had a thick limestone lintel and a thin slab floor made of Malby or Liscannor slabs. Another drain ran in a north-south direction beneath the north face of the cutting; it also had a limestone lintel and brick was used in its construction. Its fill was a black, greasy residue in which eggshell was visible, and the floor was also paved with thin slabs of Liscannor or Malbay stone. Bounding its western edge were thicker, roughly worked slabs of limestone, and abutting its western edge was a wall face of red brick.

Below the discontinuous level of the cobbles, towards the eastern end of this cutting was an old ground level in which the cobbles had been bedded. This produced North Devonshire(?) ware. Below this were riverine muds containing shell and animal bone. The earliest material from this cutting was 17th-century pottery and clay pipe stems.

Area 3
Area 3 was excavated in advance of the construction of a lift-shaft within the demolished 19th-century building adjoining the priory building of 1820.

Modern tiles and concrete mortar bedding extended across the site, except where the walling of the demolished building occurred; below this was a layer of round, water-rolled limestone cobbles. Below this in the western edge was stone, mortar, clay and rubble. At the western face of the cutting was a wall of an earlier building which was 0.62–0.64m wide and which had been cut through at right angles by the 19th-century wall. The earlier wall was set on a wide plinth and the wall which cut it was much thinner. The later wall was coeval with the front wall of the previously existing 19th-century extension to the priory buildings. The earlier wall was of a house which had been deliberately demolished as the result of a fire. The walls contained some red brick and the structure was probably of 18th- or even very early 19th-century date. It had a floor which was positioned presumably on thick beams, supported on an internal plinth. The high hollow area beneath the floor was no doubt necessitated by the damp nature of the site. Above the plinth was a skirting board and the lime render of the wall projected outwards slightly, thus indicating the former level of the floor. Wooden plugs inserted into the wall and iron staining on the stone indicated the position of the nails which held the skirting board in position. The walling had lime mortar render with a scratch-layer or course over which was (internally) a fine plaster layer and at least two coats of paint. Externally this wall was also rendered with lime mortar and possibly harled.

Inside the building defined by Wall 2 on the west and the stepped-down foundation of Wall 1 on the south the rubble overlay fallen mortar, and below this was a burnt layer of badly crushed slates and charcoal, burnt wood and slating nails. This burnt layer had fallen onto the original floor level on the west side of the cutting and rose away from it on the western face of the cutting. Below this was brown clay with, on the inner east side, the inwardly projecting plinth of the wall. Below this plinth was muddy and mainly riverine silt containing animal bone, later pottery (18th- to 19th-century) and shell. Outside the wall of this building was a layer of rough cobbling which seems to have covered a yard to the east of the back wall of the building. These cobbles were also bedded in sticky riverine silts which contained shell and bone.

It seems likely that all of the site was wet and marshy and that in these areas over several centuries a mix of discarded animal bone, oyster shells and also naturally occurring shellfish remains accumulated. This material included pottery and clay pipes from the 17th century onwards. By the late 18th or early 19th-century, large quantities of builders' rubble, which included medieval and post-medieval architectural fragments, were dumped. The building remnants and drains which were unopened are all post-medieval to 19th-century in date. Some of the fine architectural fragments might well have come from the remains of the medieval Franciscan abbey which was located further up the road on St Stephen's Island, where the Court House and Town Hall Theatre now exist. Substantial walls of the Franciscan establishment and some burials are believed to have been uncovered a few years ago when those buildings were renovated.

The Court House dates from c. 1815 and the Town Hall Theatre is slightly later. The present priory accommodation block is dated by a plaque incorporated into it in 1820 and the adjacent Franciscan church to the 1850s. An earlier chapel of 1781 was located at this site also, and a dated stone from an arch with the inscription 'This Chapel was Rebuilt AD 1781' was found along with two stone weights on the roofs of the modern extensions to the present buildings prior to their demolition. It seems likely that much of the mixed rubble containing 13th-, 15th-, 16th- and 17th-century architectural fragments, together with miscellaneous ashlar and red brick and a single medieval tile, might have been dumped in association with
(a) the clearance of the site for the Court House prior to 1815,
(b) the clearance for the chapel of 1781,
(c) for the priory accommodation block of 1820
or (d) for the building of the adjacent Abbey (Franciscan) Church, which was consecrated in 1855.
The finds from the site are in temporary storage in Galway City Museum. The architectural fragments are in the Franciscan Graveyard, Newtownsmith, to the rear of the priory. Some of these will be displayed along with the existing collection of 16th-19th-century funerary monuments and architectural fragments presently displayed at the site.

The full excavation report will be published as an appendix to J. Higgins, Franciscan relics-the history, genealogy, architecture and sculpture of the Franciscan Abbey, Galway (Galway, 1997).