County: Dublin Site name: St Sylvester’s Church, Malahide
Sites and Monuments Record No.: DU012–023(01–3) Licence number: 10E0426
Author: Melanie McQuade, Margaret Gowen & Co. Ltd, 27 Merrion Square, Dublin 2.
Site type: Post-medieval structural remains
Period/Dating: —
ITM: E 722519m, N 746106m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 53.450771, -6.155398
The present church on this site was built in the middle of the 19th century and is unusual in that it is orientated north–south. The original church recorded on this site, DU012–023(02), would have had an east–west orientation. A possible mound site, DU012–023(03), and a holy well, DU012–023(01), are recorded in the vicinity of the proposed development.
The church has an undercroft which comprises five long rooms accessed from its northern end. These rooms are c. 3.5m high (from floor to ceiling). The garden area to the west of the church is in a hollow c. 3m below street level and the rest of the church grounds are at street level.
Test excavations were carried out within the area of the proposed new parish centre to the west of the church, where five trenches were excavated, and the prayer chapel to the east of the church and the north of the small graveyard, where another trench was dug. Two post-medieval masonry walls, interpreted as the remains of the early 19th-century church building that previously occupied the site, a small undated pit/drainage gully and a silty deposit that may date from the medieval period, were identified within the proposed area of development, to the west of the existing church building. There is a possibility that the deposit upon which the early 19th-century walls were constructed could date to the medieval period since medieval pottery sherds were recovered from it. However, owing to the depth of material in the test-trenches it was not possible for health and safety reasons to carry out a thorough analysis of the lower, potentially medieval, deposit.
Sherds of medieval pottery were also recovered from topsoil and redeposited subsoil in another test-trench excavated on the western end of the site. The presence of these pottery sherds indicates that some level of activity took place on the site or in the vicinity during the 13th or 14th centuries. It is possible that the pottery sherds could relate to activity associated with the mound that once stood on this site, perhaps suggesting that it may have been a motte or a rath that was occupied for a considerable period of time. No burial remains were uncovered in any of the test-trenches and a deep (3m) deposit of fill was identified on the east of the site.
