2001:402 - DUBLIN: The City Workhouse, St James’s Hospital, St James’s Street, Dublin

The excavation of the site of the City Workhouse was undertaken from December 2000 to March 2001. The site measured approximately 90m square, and was to be developed by Trinity College as a school of medicine. The site had been tested by Linzi Simpson (Excavations 2000, No. 267) and the foundations of part of the workhouse uncovered, in addition to a deposit of up to 1m of cultivation soils of medieval and later date. Four main phases of activity were recorded:
Phase 1 — late 12th–early 13th-century house and contemporary features;
Phase 2 — late 13th–16th-century agricultural activity;
Phase 3 — later medieval roadway, resurfaced in the mid-17th century;
Phase 4 — construction of the workhouse in 1703.

The earliest level on the site dates from the late 12th century. This period is represented by a rectangular timber structure and probable associated corn-drier. These features were sealed by a thick deposit of agricultural soil and were cut through by the features of Phase 2.

In Phase 2, cultivation soil accumulated over the central and southern part of the site. Field boundaries were dug to enclose a field, and these ditches cut through the floors of the structure of Phase 1.

A metalled roadway, which was flanked on either side by ditches, formed the main feature of Phase 3. It followed and respected the alignment of the medieval field boundary, but overlay an infilled field boundary of medieval date. This road may have had its origins in Phase 2. Sherds of medieval and 17th-century pottery were recovered from the lower level of metalling.

Several coins recovered from different locations along the road surface date its final usage to around 1670. There is no reason apparent for the decline of the route: the road went out of use some years prior to the building project of Phase 4. However, the various references to the land in the Calender of ancient records of Dublin indicate that the land was enclosed and gated, and through access was no longer granted.

The Phase 4 building was initially constructed as a poorhouse for ‘sturdy beggars’ by the Corporation of Dublin. In 1728 it became the first foundling hospital in the British Isles and had a long and miserable history, becoming the South Dublin Union Workhouse prior to the Great Famine. It became St Kevin’s Institute (hospital) and was demolished in the late 1950s or early 1960s. It was a notable building of the early 18th century, and the civic pride invested in it is reflected in the illustration on the side of Brooking’s map of 1728. Robinson (also responsible for the Royal Hospital, Kilmainham) may have been its architect. There are several 18th/early 19th-century illustrations of the dining hall, but there are very few surviving photographs of the complex.

The vaulted limestone basements beneath the dining hall were probably commenced c. 1704. The entire building plan was present on the site. It consists of a large rectangular basement, oriented east–west, which measures 38.5m east–west by 15.2m (including the width of the walls). The basement extends to a depth of almost 3m beneath its contemporary ground level. A spine wall extends centrally down its long axis, which measures 1m in width. All the walls are of bonded limestone rubble with coursed limestone facing. The building had been demolished to the level of the springing for the vaulted basement. It was used as a bomb shelter in the ‘Emergency’, and the poured concrete supports for the vaults are extant.

The basement is to be retained beneath the new development.

25A Eaton Square, Terenure, Dublin 6W