1998:253 - ST NICHOLAS'S COLLEGIATE CHURCH, Galway

Emergency archaeological work was carried out at St Nicholas's Collegiate Church, Galway, in September 1998 because of some unlicensed disturbance by mechanical digger. The area is bounded by Market Street, Church Lane, Lombard Street and Church Yard Street. During the course of laying a French drain human bones and other archaeological material had been encountered. Most of the trenches had been backfilled, and in only a few could the stratigraphy be recorded.

The archaeological team sieved all the remaining spoil from several trenches that had not yet been dumped and retrieved large amounts of human bone along with numerous artefacts. The trenches were on average 0.4–0.45m wide and 0.8–0.9m deep; in segment F the trench was 0.9–1m wide.

Segment E, 0.4m wide, had been partly infilled but was photographed and drawn. The spoil was sifted, and human bone, along with mainly 19th-century pottery and some glass, was recovered. It is clear that the area had been disturbed in relatively recent times. The crushed and broken nature of the bone seems to suggest that the soil either contained a residue from burials that had been extracted from it or had been redeposited from elsewhere in the vicinity.

Some distance below the gravel and the mixed, brown, stony layer that occurred beneath it in Cutting 2 was a disturbed layer of cobblestones. It seems likely that a cobbled layer originally extended as far as the South Porch (or certainly the entire length of the present cutting). The cobblestones were generally set in a matrix of grey to greyish/brown soil, which contained grits, some small stones and the occasional piece of bone.

Below this was a deposit of stone of various sizes that had been introduced to raise the ground level considerably; 18th- and 19th-century pottery came from this context. This layer gave way to a second layer of cobblestones. These were substantially larger but less disturbed than those above and extended across most of the length of the cutting. The cobbles were generally edge set with their long axes set flat in the ground towards the south end of the cutting. Further towards the north the cobbles tended to be smaller and were set in the ground along their vertical axes. They may have had several phases of setting and resetting.

Context 7 consisted of what may have been a disturbed area. There were stones here that may have been disturbed cobbles, but generally the stone was cruder. They were set in a layer of material that varied from mid-yellow to grey, and the soil had obviously been mixed as a result of disturbance. Some disturbed human bone was also found in this context. The bone, however, was not in situ.

The finds included three sherds of green-glazed Saintonge pottery, large quantities of 18th/19th-century pottery and glass and some 17th-19th-century clay pipe fragments. Also found were ridge-tile fragments and modern bottle glass, along with some scraps of iron and lead and some lengths of copper-alloy wire. Also recovered was part of a bone handle from a late medieval piece.

'St Gerard's', 18 College Road, Galway