County: Galway Site name: GALWAY: Convent of Mercy, Francis Street
Sites and Monuments Record No.: N/A Licence number: 98E0192
Author: Jim Higgins
Site type: Church and Religious house - Franciscan friars
Period/Dating: Multi-period
ITM: E 529516m, N 724990m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 53.270559, -9.056668
Excavations in the grounds of the Convent of Mercy were undertaken when an 18th/19th-century building, containing a fine armorial doorway dated to 1624, was being demolished and the doorway removed and incorporated in the new structure.
Stripping of the interior walls of the building resulted in the discovery of reused cut stone architectural fragments and late medieval timbers, the latter used as lintels to doorways and windows. The building was constructed in the early 19th century on the site of an 18th-century building. The present Convent of Mercy lies partly on the site of the Franciscan foundation established by William Liath de Burgo in 1296 on St Stephen's Island. A large number of medieval and late medieval architectural fragments relating to that foundation are displayed in the grounds of the convent.
A cutting made outside the end of the building produced evidence of a cellar that seems to pre-date the present building, appearing to belong to an 18th-century building constructed on much the same line. The finds from the cutting, all of 18th/19th-century-date, include numerous pieces of stained glass with floral patterns, along with pottery and bottle glass.
A large, deep, U-shaped ditch, which must originally have run across the site of the 19th-century building and continued into the grounds of the present Franciscan cemetery, just across the wall from the present grounds of the convent, was encountered. It seems to correspond to one partially excavated by this writer in 1997 (Excavations 1997, 69–71, 97E0223). The feature may represent one of the large canalised streams that ran through the gardens of the Franciscan Abbey, shown on the Pictorial Map of Galway of 1651.
The finds from this feature included the usual range of late and post-medieval pottery, including North Devonshire graffito and gravel-tempered ware, a Spanish olive jar, Weltcruwald stoneware, clay pipes and small copper-alloy shroud-pins. Quantities of mortar, slate and animal bones also occurred.
