County: Dublin Site name: NASH’S, 50 PATRICK STREET/31 AND 32 KEVIN STREET, DUBLIN
Sites and Monuments Record No.: N/A Licence number: 04E1382
Author: Claire Walsh, 27 Coulson Avenue, Rathgar, Dublin 6.
Site type: Urban medieval
Period/Dating: —
ITM: E 715066m, N 733580m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 53.339931, -6.272121
A short excavation was undertaken in June/July 2005 in advance of a new building on the site. The previous 19th-century structure had a basement, and other ancillary constructions had removed all earlier deposits on the site, apart from the area towards the Patrick Street front. The site had originally been part of the precinct of St Patrick’s Cathedral.
A shallow ditch towards the street front extended from the southern corner northwards. The fill of the ditch returned some waterlogged material, including a wooden boule of late medieval date. Stone kerbing to sod layers on the east side of the ditch suggests the former presence here of a bowling green. The finds, including pottery, reflect the relatively high status of the area’s inhabitants. Decorative ceramic floor tiles, paralleled in the floor of the nearby cathedral, were also recovered from the ditch fill. Material from secondary sources includes a quantity of Dundry stone, incorporated into the standing building on the site and retrieved from the demolition rubble. Later buildings over the ditch had been built on worked medieval timbers reused as vertical piles.
