2003:553 - DUBLIN: St Mary’s Church, Mary Street, Dublin

This work represents the last phase of monitoring at St Mary’s Church, a late 17th-century galleried church which has been undergoing redevelopment since 1997. The graveyard attached to the church, now Wolfe Tone Park, is located on the southern side. The new scheme will convert the building into a restaurant, caf» and licensed bar and a basement was inserted beneath the church for this purpose. This necessitated the removal of several crypts, while the general construction work necessitated the temporary removal of more major elements, such as the supporting stone columns of the gallery, part of the gallery structure, the organ casing at the western end of the church, as well as various sections of panelling.

Excavations in the central part of the church revealed some sort of earlier wall features, as well as a brick heating system, associated with the church. No earlier remains were found. Phase 2, the current phase, saw the creation of an additional basement, which extends out beneath the pavement on the north (under Mary Street) and west (under Wolfe Tone Street) sides. This entry details the results of this work.

Test-pits had been opened in the area of the proposed new basement and the results suggested that the church was constructed on infill deposits, which were at least 2.5m in depth. In addition, although there were burials in situ along the southern side of the church, no burials were located along either the north or western side, the proposed area of the new basement. The monitoring programme confirmed the presence and depth of the soil deposits, confirming that the church was built in a natural hollow which was filled in by ‘scavengers’, as documented in the historical sources. The monitoring also exposed the remains of a damaged culvert on the northern side of the church, orientated north–south and probably related to the heating system within the church. A deep deposit of red burnt clay/crushed brick material 0.2–0.4m in depth at the western end was probably related to brick-making in the late 17th/early 18th century. The very bottom of a large domestic rubbish pit was located in this area, which produced butchered animal, bird and fish bone, along with various shellfish, including limpet and oyster. The deposits also contained fragments of early brick and one sherd of sgraffito and North Devon gravel-tempered ware, indicative of a date in the late 17th century, before the church was constructed.

2 Killiney View, Albert Road Lower, Glenageary, Co. Dublin