County: Down Site name: St Mary’s Church of Ireland, Comber
Sites and Monuments Record No.: N/A Licence number: AE/07/145
Author: Brian Sloan, Centre for Archaeological Fieldwork, School of Geography, Archaeology and Palaeoecology, Queen’s University, Belfast, BT7 1NN.
Site type: Disarticulated human remains
Period/Dating: —
ITM: E 745980m, N 869207m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 54.550135, -5.743424
An archaeological evaluation was carried out at this site in advance of the construction of a southern transept for the existing church. The site has a long history: it is reputed to be the location for a Cistercian abbey founded in the late 12th century, as well as a Protestant meeting house dating to the 17th century. The present church was constructed in the 1840s. The programme of works consisted of the controlled demolition of the choir vestry (constructed in the 1970s), the driving of steel piles into the subsoil and mechanical excavation of strip foundations around these piles to a depth of c. 0.5m.
Excavation of the strip foundations showed that substantial disturbance had occurred in this part of the graveyard, with two choir vestries having been constructed since the early 20th century. The foundations of these buildings had disturbed previous graves, these being represented by a large assemblage of disarticulated human remains. These remains are assumed to be 18th- or 19th-century in date. Other finds included several sherds of medieval coarse pottery (from the generic graveyard soil), perhaps a testament to the site’s medieval origins. Post-excavation work is still ongoing for this site.
