2010:399 - Donaghcumper, Kildare

Test excavations were commissioned by Kildare County Council as a component of a Part VIII planning application for a 0.9ha graveyard extension at Donaghcumper, near Maynooth. The proposed development area is situated immediately adjacent to an early medieval, perhaps 5th–6th-century ad, monastic site which, following the Anglo-Norman conquest, was granted to St Wolstan’s Abbey and was parish church for the parish of Donaghcumper. At the Dissolution it passed to the Alen family and was in ruins by the end of the 18th century. The present ‘old’ graveyard (excluding a modern extension) is a much shrunken version of its medieval extent. Testing was preceded by a geophysical survey that indicated potential archaeological features, the majority of which were found to be geological when test-excavated, apart from a cobbled surface 70m south of the church.
The key discovery from the testing was a section of an east–west-aligned, 4.6m wide x 1.05m deep ditch that is probably part of an enclosure that surrounded the church. Such ditches in the vicinity of an early medieval church site generally define the monastic precincts, termini, and were often double or triple concentric enclosures that characterised internal areas of sanctity that decreased outwards from the central sanctissimus. A sherd of medieval pottery from the fill of a recut indicated a medieval date for this phase but more dating evidence is required and thus a radiocarbon determination is awaited on animal bone from the base of the ditch. No human skeletal remains were found and it is probable that a farmyard which occupied much of the site until quite recently had removed any remains that may have formerly been present. The only other archaeological activity recorded was an 18th–19th-century cobbled surface, probably a stable yard.