2013:026 - St Augustine’s Church, Derry

As part of a proposed programme of renovations at St Augustine’s Church in Derry/Londonderry an examination of the foundations of the Victorian church porch was requested by the structural engineer and architect. To facilitate this examination the excavation of a trench was proposed at the north-west corner of the porch. As St Augustine’s Church is situated on what may be the site of earlier Augustinian and Columban monasteries the Northern Ireland Environment Agency asked the Centre for Archaeological Fieldwork at Queen’s to carry out the excavation. A single trench was dug measuring 3m east-west by 1m. The excavation was able to demonstrate that the walls of the nave of the church were located on top of what are likely to be the foundations of an earlier church, whereas the porch was footed on a 19th-century foundation which was itself set into graveyard soil and not upon subsoil. Large amounts of mostly small fragments of apparently human bone were found during the excavation as well as quantities of 17th-, 18th- and 19th-century pottery, glass and metalwork. In addition one fragment of Scottish Grey Ware pottery possibly dating to the later Middle Ages and a 17th-century English gun flint were uncovered. The excavation work was funded by the Northern Ireland Environment Agency.

Centre for Archaeological Fieldwork, School of Geography, Archaeology and Palaeoecology, Queen’s University Belfast