County: Wexford Site name: ENNISCORTHY: 31 Court Street
Sites and Monuments Record No.: SMR 20:31(04) Licence number: 02E0540
Author: Emmet Stafford, Stafford McLoughlin Archaeology
Site type: Burial ground
Period/Dating: Multi-period
ITM: E 697173m, N 639776m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 52.500717, -6.568777
Testing was undertaken, as part of a pre-planning assessment, at the corner of Court Street and Church Street, Enniscorthy. The site is within the zone of archaeological potential of Enniscorthy, beside the parish church of St Mary’s.
Eight trenches were excavated from 15 to 18 July 2002, using a mechanical excavator fitted with a toothless bucket. Trenches 7 and 8 were excavated within upstanding buildings and revealed nothing of archaeological significance, although archaeological remains may be preserved lower than 1.9m below present ground level in the area of Trench 7.
The remainder of the trenches contained varying amounts of archaeological material. Trench 2, at the eastern boundary of the site, contained an old soil horizon that filled a straight-edged subsoil cut oriented south-east/north-west. It may represent an old gully or boundary feature.
Trenches 1 and 3–6 all contained human remains or evidence of shallow subsoil-cut graves. Two possible grave-cuts uncovered in Trench 5, at the western boundary of the site, contained no surviving skeletal remains and may not be graves. The human remains uncovered in Trench 1, at the northern boundary of the site, though substantial, were all disarticulated/disturbed from their original burial-place and may represent mid-19th-century ground clearance for the construction of the present St Mary’s Church. Trenches 3, 4 and 6 all revealed grave-cuts, some of which contained articulated skeletal remains.
Most of the subsoil-cut features uncovered, other than the graves, which were not datable, were post-medieval and appeared to be domestic refuse pits and small garden boundaries. These features appear to represent the use of the site as a garden or small horticultural site after its abandonment as a graveyard.
The absence of articulated human remains along the northern boundary of the site may be a result of site clearance before the construction of St Mary’s Church in the mid-19th century. Human interment may have occurred throughout the site during the medieval or early post-medieval period.
Unit 4, Enniscorthy Enterprise Centre, Milehouse Road, Enniscorthy, Co. Wexford
