2007:1071 - St Paul’s Church, French Church Street, Portarlington, Laois

Laois County Council has granted permission to erect a toilet block with connector to the town sewage scheme to the west of St Paul’s Church, Portarlington, subject to the condition that the site should be tested prior to development. St Paul’s Church is located in French Church Street, Portarlington, and as such lies within the archaeological constraint around the town of Portarlington (LA005–031). It also lies within the conjectured walled town of Portarlington as suggested by John Bradley in his Medieval Urban Survey (OPW, unpublished). The toilet block is to be located to the west of the church in what was the original entrance to the church. The water and sewage connection will be along this passage leading to French Church Street. The graveyard lies 1m within a walled area to the south of the development. At the time of excavation the passageway was covered with fine moss-covered gravel.
St Paul’s Church was founded in 1696 when a group of Huguenot settlers adapted an existing loom house for worship. Documentary evidence suggests that the loom house at that time was one of the largest buildings in the area and was ideally suited to the purpose. It appears that the church was parallel to the street with ample room at the rear. By the late 18th century the condition of the church was apparently very poor. A small amount of repair work was undertaken at this time. More work was done in different phases between 1840 and 1861. Although no architect’s plans survive to show whether the old church was totally demolished or incorporated into the new building, it is thought that the loom house was basically retained and extended. A higher roof and walls are evident and on the outside new stonework can be seen high up in the building.
Some graves were infringed upon during the rebuilding and these graves are now set into the walls at the rear of the church both inside and out. By 1968 the burial-ground was in a completely neglected state and several of the headstones were in danger of breaking up. Work was undertaken by a group of parishioners to make the burial-ground safe. The ground level was lowered in places and some of the rusted railings were removed. Further work was undertaken in 1992 by a FÁS scheme on both the Huguenot plot and the modern parish plot. Subsequent to this a group of local students repainted most of the lettering on the old headstones.
Almost the entire area due to be disturbed by the erection of the proposed toilet block was excavated. The excavation revealed that the soil in the area of the proposed development represents c. 0.7m of fill which was deposited here at an undetermined stage in the past. The fill contained a small amount of animal bone. No date or function was determined for the single archaeological feature, which was recorded in Trench 1.