2006:604 - DUBLIN: 124–125 Capel Street, Dublin

Testing of the basement and rear of the property of Lenehan’s hardware shop was carried out in June–July 2005. The site lies north and outside of the precinct of the medieval Abbey of St Mary’s, but probably within the enclosed bounds of the former abbey estate. No medieval archaeology was found, but the natural subsoil—identified in trenches within the basement of the Capel Street frontage building at 1.49–1.87m OD—indicated that the site once sloped from west down to east.

The mortared calp limestone foundations of the first, early 18th-century build on the site were identified, with a basement floor at 2.26–2.35m OD. They had been reused in the (later) still-standing building fronting on to Capel Street. These foundations correspond with the moderate townhouse depicted on the site on Rocque’s 1756 map. Remnants of similar foundations of an outbuilding at the rear north-west corner of the property were also identified. Much of the ‘made ground’, apparently deposited to level the site prior to this first development episode, and the early-18th-century yard surface between the buildings—at c. 3.43m OD—was truncated by later building on the site. Most of what did survive of the earliest post-medieval remains on the site lay beneath the base of formation for the new development.

Monitoring of later groundworks on the site was also conducted in July–August 2005 and in January–April 2006. A more detailed chronology of the site was determined, and it is not an unfamiliar one for Dublin. The first development of the site (c. 1707–28) followed the death and break-up of the estate of Humphrey Jervis, who initiated the lay-out and development of Capel Street from the 1680s, but retained the west side of the street in larger parcels of land. A moderately sized ‘polite architecture’ townhouse remained standing at least until major renovation/refurbishment of the site in c. 1770–1800 (probably c. 1793). The townhouse seems already to have become tenemented by the middle of the 18th century; the late 18th-century rebuilding involved the division of the property into what became Nos 124 and 125 and the building up of the rear, Anglesea Row, frontage. Some of the basements were backfilled in c. 1830, and both Nos 124 and 125 grew increasingly derelict from c. 1830 to 1903.

A catalogue of dressed stones (ex situ) recovered during monitoring was compiled; most are granite and apparently from the first 1707–28 build. Highlights included: remnants of a granite block and start ‘Gibbsian’ doorcase; a fragment of a Portland oolitic limestone wall plaque inscribed with ‘ANNE—’ and ‘179—’; and a calp limestone gravestone or memorial stone ‘blank’ used as a late 18th/early 19th-century paving stone. The latter is as likely to have derived from St Mary’s Church (c. 1702) or the North King Street/Green Street graveyard for Newgate Prison (c. 1780s), the Sheriff’s Prison (c. 1794) and the debtors’ prison City Marshalsea (c. 1804), as it is to have come from St Mary’s Abbey. Some of this stone will be reused in the new development.

27 Merrion Square, Dublin 2