2001:388 - DUBLIN: John Dillon Street, Dublin

Rescue excavation at a development site at John Dillon Street took place in April/May 2001, as a response to monitoring of a site in an archaeologically sensitive area. The site had been tested for archaeological deposits in 1998 (Excavations 1998, No. 168), but no deposits of archaeological significance were apparent in the machine-dug test-trench. Monitoring of groundworks and site clearance was stipulated as a condition of planning permission.

During this phase, disarticulated human bone was uncovered in the north-west of the site. Further archaeological deposits were subsequently uncovered towards the east side of the site during monitoring of geologists’ test-pits. All archaeological deposits within the development site were hand-excavated to subsoil. A small assemblage of artefacts was recovered, and environmental material, waterlogged timbers, wattles and soil samples were retrieved. A dendrochronological date of AD 1267 was recovered from two timbers in a timber-lined pit.

The site is located in what forms the south-east corner of the precinct of the church of St Nicholas of Myra. This probably stands on the site of the medieval Franciscan friary, established in 1233. Nothing is known of the internal layout of the friary, but it is supposed that the church site and claustral buildings lie beneath the substantial edifice of the 19th-century church.

Two discrete areas of archaeological deposits occurred on the site. The earlier deposits were all cut into boulder clay, towards the east (street) end of the site, and consisted of pits and a ditch. No contemporary or later medieval soils remained over the area that had been formerly occupied by an 18th-century Independent chapel, whose foundations cut through to subsoil. A localised area of late medieval and post-medieval soils with articulated burials was present only in the north-west corner of the site, where the west wall of the chapel turned eastwards and then continued northwards.

The earliest feature was a ditch which extended north–south along the eastern side of the site, close to the footpath of John Dillon Street. The ditch measured 4.5m in width from edge to edge, with steeply sloping sides, achieving a maximum depth of 1.4m below the level of subsoil. The fills of the ditch were consistent along its length. The lowest fill was of deliberately deposited clay and stones, up to 0.3m in depth, which formed a lining along the base and on the lower sides of the ditch. Intermittent fills of cess material and sterile clays formed the main fill. A section of a collapsed post-and-wattle fence had been pushed from its original vertical position along the east side of the ditch into the organic fills. The ditch was then levelled with sterile redeposited boulder clay.

Two cesspits of 13th-century date partly cut the ditch. One had a lining of well-preserved oak planks, set in a mortised base plate. The upper level of both pits had been backfilled with redeposited boulder clay. Few finds were recovered from the fills.

Thirteen burials of 17th-century and later date and two charnel pits were excavated. These were cut by the walls of the small Independent chapel, which was entered from John Dillon Street. The burials date from the period when the site was reoccupied for use as a parish church.

It is uncertain when the area to the south of St Nicholas of Myra ceased to function as a graveyard, but presumably it was some time prior to 1829 when the present church was begun.

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