2000:0277 - DUBLIN: Mercer Street, Dublin

This site is immediately south of the site of the medieval leper hospital and church dedicated to St Stephen. Human remains were identified in two separate locations on the eastern side of this site during monitoring of ground reduction works in advance of development. Audrey Gahan had previously excavated a large part of the site (see Excavations 2000, No. 276).

At least seven simple pit graves were identified. All were dug through a deposit of orange, sandy clay into a deposit of stony, brown, sandy clay (undisturbed natural); each was filled with a deposit of yellowish-brown, silty clay.

Eleven individual interments were found in these graves. One grave contained three individuals; a second contained two; and a third (as yet unexcavated) may also contain two individuals. Generally the burials were laid out with their heads at the west. The exceptions to this rule were two individuals with their heads to the east; they appear to have been buried this way as it was easier to fit two or more individuals in a grave if the bodies were ‘topped and tailed’. The burials were all placed on their backs. No coffin fittings or shroud-pins were found with the remains.

A sherd of glazed, locally made medieval pottery in the fill of one of the graves suggests that these burials are no earlier than the late 12th century; one of the graves was cut by a cellar wall of late 18th/early 19th-century date. The fact that the cemetery respects the alignment of Mercer Street suggests that this thoroughfare was in existence when the interments took place. Mercer Street was apparently laid out between 1673 and 1756.

Further excavation will take place in 2001 following the demolition of two upstanding buildings on the south-eastern corner of the site.

Windsor House, 11 Fairview Strand, Fairview, Dublin 3