2011:545 - ABBEY STREET/TEELING STREET, ABBEYQUARTER NORTH, SLIGO, Sligo

Sligo Abbey, a Dominican foundation of 1252, is at the east end of Sligo town. Abbey Street runs along its southern side and Teeling Street runs south from the west end of Abbey Street. South of the abbey is Abbey Street Car Park, where in 2010 human and animal bone was revealed in the several holes opened there (Excavations 2010, no. 601, E4156). The present works began at the north-west corner of that car park, opposite a point well down the nave of the abbey, and continued westwards opposite the western part of the building. They were completed over several weeks in late 2011 and comprised the laying of a new surface for 140m from the north-west corner of the car park to midway up Teeling Street. This involved a minor realignment of 40m of footpath edge and it was here that all the archaeology was revealed.

Working from east to west from that corner, the eastern 40m involved the narrowing of the existing footpath and so the new kerb required a 0.45m-deep trench.  The first 27m produced several reburied individual disarticulated bones (many of which are human), a piece of antler, modern crockery and modern pipes. There were only some long bones for most of this length and at one point there was a concentration of smaller bones, probably human. Between 27m and 30m from the start the cranial parts of several, at least seven, human skulls were encountered. Clearly these had been reburied; there were no lower jaws and only a few teeth were found in total. The amount of bone in the soil from 30m to 40m was very small. There were occasional oyster, cockle and other shells in the soil throughout, but four small concentrations of shell, three of oyster and one of cockle, were found and excavated.

From 40m westwards the new kerb was on the line of the old one; this replacement did not require digging deeper than the old kerb foundations and so archaeological deposits were not encountered.

The old concrete pavement was broken off and the existing base was used for the new brick paving. This meant that only occasional bones and pieces of modern piping were exposed in this part of the work. A few pieces of thin shank of clay pipes, a thick orange-red pottery handle and some pieces of modern crockery were also found, as was a small, natural half-nodule of flint.

The discovery of human bone here was expected. The works on the Abbey Street Car Park in 2010 revealed human and animal bone in the several holes opened there.  Halpin (pers. comm.) found masses of disarticulated human bone during the development of the buildings along this side of the street.

All of these finds of human bone were disarticulated. This area is only across the street from the present boundary of Sligo Abbey. Revd William Henry (NA MS 2533) records the deplorable condition of the abbey grounds in 1739, with bones everywhere and skulls piled up on the high altar. M.B. Timoney (2005, 86) collected a record of the appalling condition of the abbey grounds, with exposed bones and skulls everywhere, and noted that there were several cleanings-out of bones from the abbey proper; the bones exposed in our works presumably derive from one or more of those clearances.

Only the south side of the street was completed in 2011; it is planned to return to the north side and the road itself later.

References

Henry, W.  1739  Hints towards a natural topographical history of the counties Sligoe, Donegal, Fermanagh and Lough Erne by the Rev. William Henry, M.A., Rector of Killasher in Fermanagh and Chaplain to the Lord Bishop of Kilmore. National Archives of Ireland, MS 2533.

Timoney, M.B.  2005  Had me made: a study of the grave memorials of Co. Sligo from c. 1650 to the present. Keash.

Bóthar an Corainn, Keash, Co. Sligo.