County: Clare Site name: ENNIS FRIARY, Ennis
Sites and Monuments Record No.: N/A Licence number: 98E0195
Author: Jerry O'Sullivan for Glasgow University Archaeological Research Division (GUARD)
Site type: Religious house - Franciscan friars
Period/Dating: Late Medieval (AD 1100-AD 1599)
ITM: E 533870m, N 677674m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 52.845940, -8.981687
Dúchas, in advance of proposed conservation and development works, commissioned an excavation that extended over c. 70m2 within the area of the former east range and cloister walk. Some medieval wall remnants were uncovered, but the principal focus of interest was around ninety early modern graves, all of which were unmarked. The remains were all skeletal: no clothing or coffins survived intact. Indeed, the earliest individuals appear to have been wrapped in shrouds or winding cloths rather than buried in coffins. The graves were generally shallow, and the cemetery was very congested.
The friary precinct was used as a cemetery from perhaps the mid- or late 1600s until its formal closure in the 1890s. The Church of Ireland congregation, who worshipped here from the 1600s until the 1870s, principally used it, but other denominations are also likely to be represented, especially amongst the earlier burials. A full palaeopathologist's study of fifty individuals has been compiled for publication (in prep., Journal of Post-Medieval Archaeology).
5 Bellevue Road, Edinburgh EH7 4DA, Scotland
