2001:247 - COLERAINE: Abbey Street, Derry

Excavations were undertaken at this site by EHS: Built Heritage in September 2001 in advance of the building of a replacement church.

The site is on the corner of Stone Row and Abbey Street, Coleraine, and the principal aim was to investigate possible 17th-century house remains along Stone Row. Four trenches were excavated along the lines of the new church foundations.

While no remains of 17th-century housing were uncovered, several gullies and a cesspit testify to nearby occupation during that period. Features indicative of medieval occupation on the site were also found, dated by the presence of various Redcliffe, Ham Green, Saintonge and local glazed wares to the 13th–14th century.

Within one medieval pit was a silver Irish halfpenny of Edward I, minted in Dublin and dating from 1279–1302; coins like these are likely to have gone out of circulation by the 1360s. Also recovered from the upper fill of the pit was a gold brooch, consisting of a circular frame on which four large oval collets containing red or blue glass alternate with four brambled bosses, and with triplets of leaves forming diagonal struts between them. The hinge consists of a pair of parallel loops set at right angles to the plane of the frame and retains a transverse rivet. The brooch belongs to Class 6b, as defined in Deevy’s (1998) comprehensive study, a type securely dated to the 13th and 14th centuries.

The medieval features would seem to represent frontages in the direction of Abbey Street, with shallow ditches or gullies delimiting each property and another to the rear separating them from an area of possible garden soil which contained a 14th-century Bruce halfpenny.

Reference
Deevy, M.B. 1998 Medieval ring brooches in Ireland. Wordwell, Bray.

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