County: Galway Site name: ORANMORE
Sites and Monuments Record No.: SMR 95:114 Licence number: 98E0525
Author: Billy Quinn, Archaeological Services Unit Ltd.
Site type: No archaeology found
Period/Dating: N/A
ITM: E 538629m, N 724612m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 53.268300, -8.920000
The monitoring of groundwork at the site of St Mary's Church and graveyard, Oranmore, took place on 12 November 1998.
The church is being redeveloped into a community office, with ancillary alterations and accommodation, funded by the local Community Development Association. Development work involved the excavation of two service trenches and a box area to accommodate an ESB cable and a foul sewer connected to a holding tank (all groundwork is to take place outside the building). With the exception of the area to the rear of the building, which was dug by hand, all the excavation work was carried out by mechanical digger using a toothless bucket.
Trench A was c. 27m long, 0.6m wide and 0.9m deep and ran from the new office entrance at the north-west of the church to the front gates of the site. The sod and topsoil layer was 0.13m deep and contained two sherds of modern pottery and broken glass. The tarmacadamed driveway directly overlay a brown, silty sand, 0.21m deep. Under this a dark grey/brown, stony layer was 0.23m thick, above natural.
Trench B ran alongside Trench A and extended from the rear of the church around to the toilets in the community office. It had an overall length of 38m, was excavated in two sections and had the same stratigraphy as Trench A. The only finds retrieved were two disarticulated pieces of animal bone found under the tarmac layer. The trench had a maximum depth of 0.9m and an average width of 0.6m, widening to 3m to accommodate the holding tank.
At the rear of the church the hand-dug trench was more narrow and shallow, measuring 0.4m and 0.45m respectively. A thin topsoil with a brown silt sod, 0.8m thick, overlay a coarser sand with a moderate amount of small stones, 0.12m thick. Below this was a dark brown, silty layer, similar to the bottom layer in Trench A. This stratigraphic sequence was interrupted at the north-east corner of the church by a yellow/brown clay that was found below the dark brown, silty layer. This layer may be associated with a nearby grave-cut.
Monitoring of the groundwork at St Mary's Church revealed no archaeological levels or finds. Both trenches were deliberately sited to cause as little disturbance as possible to the surrounding grave sites. This aim was achieved successfully.
Purcell House, Oranmore, Co. Galway
