County: Sligo Site name: Calry Church, Rathquarter, Sligo
Sites and Monuments Record No.: SL014–065 Licence number: 03E0514
Author: Martin A. Timoney, Bóthar an Chorainn, Keash, Co. Sligo.
Site type: No archaeological significance
Period/Dating: —
ITM: E 569585m, N 836071m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 54.272540, -8.466955
Calry Church of Ireland church, The Mall, Sligo, on the slope down to the Garavogue River, upriver of and on the opposite bank to Sligo’s Dominican abbey, dates to 1824. This being a relief church on a virgin site, it does not have a graveyard, burials of its patrons being interred at St John’s on the other side of Sligo town. The topography of the site suggested that not only was the ground under the church removed at construction but that also much of the ground downhill towards the riverside was severely altered in the 1820s. It is said that the church was ‘built of rock quarried on the spot’.
Five red-brick vaults, the catacombs, take up the entire ground under the church. Monitoring within the vaults is reported on in Excavations 2003, No. 1680. Nothing of an archaeological nature was found.
The second part of the development proposal was to link the refurbished catacombs with a new external glass corridor on the south and to erect a circulation tower at the west end of the corridor through part of the tarred circulation area for the adjoining manse building. This was tested in February 2006. Four test-trenches were opened on the lines of the wall footings. One trench was at the east end of the corridor, one at the south side and two in the area of the circulation tower. The trenches were 1–1.2m wide. The material exposed was a deep deposit of natural undisturbed glacial deposits, a soft compact grey daub. Above this was only sporadic evidence of a surviving developed soil. There was no evidence of archaeology.
At the time of testing the outside area, the floors of the catacombs were being lowered. Close to the bases of the supports of the vaults a few oyster shells were noted – these are frequently found in ground openings in Sligo town. Red-brick fragments and 19th-century glass were also found, but nothing of an archaeological nature.
During the works the son of a former occupant of the Glebe House told of seeing a large deposit of oyster shells in the garden of the Glebe some decades ago. A trench for a storm water outflow pipe crossed the garden near, but not through, the location he recollected.
