2010:264 - PROVOST’s HOUSE, 1 grafton street, dublin, Dublin

Monitoring took place of an engineering test-trench at the base of the Provost’s Gate, No. 1 Grafton Street, Trinity College, Dublin 2. The trench was located within the Provost’s House courtyard, at the base of the northern pier of the north pedestrian gate. The aim of the project was to attempt to locate and examine drainage in this location, as pooling of water was noticed here in the recent past.
The excavation of the pit, which measured 1.5m north–south by 0.7m by 0.6m in depth, was carried out in August 2010 and revealed the remains of a brick structure, probably late 17th century in date, pre-dating the construction of the Provost’s House in 1759. The cartographic sources do not identify this structure. De Gomme, dated to 1678, depicts the area as an open space (although houses are not always depicted on this map), while on Rocque’s 1756 map of Dublin it was laid out as a formal garden attached to the college. However, the type of brick was found to be very similar to other foundations found further north, in the small green just outside Front Gate (Excavations 2002, No. 587, 98E0150). These buildings were securely dated to the late 17th century by a large number of clay pipes recovered from the foundations, suggestive of clay-pipe manufacturing in this location. This suggests, then, that there was a row of houses directly outside Front Gate fronting on to College Green, from the late 17th onwards, which were probably demolished by the mid-18th century, an indication of the congestion of Dublin at this date.
The fragment of structure was left in situ and covered in a layer of sand and stone to prevent any damage when the trench was backfilled.