County: Galway Site name: KINALEHIN FRIARY AND ABBEYVILLE
Sites and Monuments Record No.: N/A Licence number: 99E0528
Author: Tadhg O'Keefe, Department of Archaeology, University College Dublin
Site type: Earthwork
Period/Dating: Undetermined
ITM: E 572802m, N 705802m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 53.102100, -8.406143
Further investigtions by a joint UCD-University of Bristol team in the field to the south of the ruins of Kinalehin Franciscan friary involved a programme of resistivity survey and the excavation of three trial-trenches. The resistivity survey indicated a possible plan of the Carthusian monastery known to have been founded here in the 13th century. The trenches were laid out to assist in the interpretation of the resistivity survey and to assess the potential of the site for further investigation.
One of the trenches, outside the wall of the Franciscan refectory, contained a fill of stones in a wide ditch, both of indeterminate date. The second trench contained evidence of a robbed wall, and this has provisionally been interpreted as the back wall of the Carthusian monastery. The third trench revealed a deep ditch running at an unusual angle relative to other features on the site, and part of a human bone (probably a femur) was found in its fill. The date of this ditch could not be established.
Resistivity survey and a limited programme of soil sampling for heavy-metal analysis were also carried out at Abbeyville, to the south of the friary ruins but in the same parish. This may be the site of the 'lower house' of the Carthusian monastery-the place where guests and lay brethren stayed. A number of possible house sites are visible as earthworks, and soil analysis confirmed human occupation here.
Belfield, Dublin 4
