County: Dublin Site name: DUBLIN: Mercy Convent, Cork Street
Sites and Monuments Record No.: N/A Licence number: 00E0728
Author: Eoin Corcoran, Archaeological Development Services Ltd.
Site type: Tannery
Period/Dating: Modern (AD 1750-AD 2000)
ITM: E 714391m, N 733282m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 53.337401, -6.282358
Pre-development testing, supplementary to that conducted by E. Eoin Sullivan in 2000 (Excavations 2000, No. 255), took place beneath demolished buildings at this site on Cork Street in December 2004. During the demolition of standing buildings, part of a timber-lined tanning box was exposed. Four test-trenches were mechanically excavated to assess the remainder of the site. Only one of the trenches contained any archaeological material. This consisted of several planks and organic deposits representative of the side of a second timber-lined tanning box c. 0.8m below current ground level.
The majority of the proposed development site appears to be devoid of archaeological remains. Only a discrete area in the north-eastern area of the site appears to contain the remains of tanning boxes. These may be part of a tanning yard once present on the site. The fact that only the remains of two boxes were found during the testing suggests that either the tanning yard was only present in a small area of the site or that the rest of it has been destroyed by later activity.
Windsor House, 11 Fairview Strand, Dublin 3
