2001:036 - CAVAN: 36 Bridge Street, Cavan

An assessment was carried out at the rear of McCaul’s Pub, 36 Bridge Street, Cavan. Three test-trenches were opened to assess the impact of the footprint of a proposed extension to the pub. The site lies within the precinct of St Mary’s Abbey, a Franciscan friary, purportedly founded by Gila-Isu O’Reilly in 1330. The extent of the abbey is indicated as fronting onto Bridge Street on a representation of the ‘Towne of the Cavan’ from the 1590s. The friary buildings are believed to have been demolished to make way for a new Anglican house by 1616. Currently, a small walled graveyard and several buildings of disputed date are all that remain visible at the friary. The site under investigation lay 20m from the southernmost limits of the modern burial-ground.

The testing revealed a property boundary of 17th-century date which would originally have divided Bridge Street into the narrow plots visible on the 1st edition OS map. The remains of a child burial were identified as stratified below the boundary. A deposit of disarticulated human remains was recovered from behind the wall of an 18th-century culverted, flagged drain, running north–south across the site. It could not be established whether these originally came from that location or from elsewhere on the site.

It could not be determined from this phase of assessment whether the burials represented the original use of the Bridge Street frontage as a burial-ground associated with the friary. No other burials were noted, nor was human bone recovered from the overlying garden soils which covered the site. Both burials were covered in blue plastic and retained in situ.

No further archaeological features, other than the burials, property boundary and drain, were identified on the site. Further assessment is to take place in 2002.

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