2008:206 - Christ Church (Holy Trinity), Main Street South, Cork, Cork

Christ Church (CO074–034(08)) and its associated graveyard (CO074–034(09)) are located to the east side of South Main Street in the heart of the walled medieval city of Cork (CO074–034(01)). There has been a church on this site since at least 1185. The existing church was constructed in 1720. The church and graveyard are in the ownership of Cork City Council. As part of a joint venture with the Triskel Arts Centre, located to the immediate north of the church, it is proposed to repair, modify and refurbish the church building for use as a performance/
exhibition space and music venue. Site investigation works, including the excavation of sixteen trial pits and the drilling of a number of boreholes, were carried out between August and November 2008 in order to inform future stabilisation work in the vicinity of the church. The trial pits, where possible, were hand excavated to the base of the wall foundations.
Five trial pits were excavated in the lane to the north of the church in order to locate the base of the foundations of the present church and of the Triskel Arts Centre building. The north wall of the church at the western end was constructed of mortared ashlar limestone blocks and stood on a stepped mortared sandstone and limestone foundation. The upper foundation course, constructed of roughly coursed blocks, was 0.36m high and offset from the church wall face by 0.1m. The lower foundation course, offset from the upper foundation by 0.1m, was 0.56m high. The mid-section of the church wall rested on a single large sandstone slab laid on large rubble stones at a depth of 2.22m OD. The rubble stones were unhewn, except for a single cut stone which may represent debris from an earlier church.
The foundations of the Triskel building stood on the reduced walls of an earlier sandstone building at 1.89m OD. The earlier wall stood on a deposit of brown clays with a post-medieval pottery content.
A well-built sandstone drain ran the length of the lane to the north of the church. The mortared sidewalls were internally faced and the drain was capped with large flat sandstone slabs.
The truncated partial remains of earlier lane surfaces were exposed abutting the Triskel building. A lane surface constructed of fragments of limestone slabs was exposed overlying a deposit of oyster shells in the lower levels of the lane. The upper levels of the lane were largely filled with loose mortar and rubble. Pottery sherds recovered from this fill were of 17th-century or later date. A single sherd of green-glazed medieval pottery, likely to be French in origin, was recovered from the lower levels of rubble fill indicating that there had probably been some redeposition of medieval material disturbed during one of the construction phases of the church. A cobbled lane, comprised of small flat stones and rounded cobbles, overlaid the rubble deposits and had been truncated by the east–west stone drain.
Seven pits were excavated to examine the wall foundations of the apse at the east end of the church, four internally (including one in the vestry to the north of the apse) and three externally. The 19th-century apse was constructed on a stepped mortar and stone foundation. The cut for these foundations had truncated articulated human remains which were exposed at only 0.06m below the existing ground levels in places. The excavation of a trial pit within the apse exposed a flight of steps leading to a lower ground level in the northern part of the apse, which was constructed on a deep concrete wall foundation.
Three long trenches were excavated at the western end of the church, including one at the south-western corner of the building, in order to inform the proposed underpinning of the building at this point. A subsurface brick crypt with a limestone grave slab was exposed at c. 0.7m below the existing churchyard surface.
A single pit that was excavated within the crypt against the north wall of the church at the location of a proposed viewing box into the crypt exposed articulated human remains at c. 0.45m below the existing ground surface.