? - St Sylvester's Church, Malahide, Dublin

A programme of archaeological excavation and monitoring was carried out in conjunction with the development of the new parish centre at St Sylvester’s Church, Malahide. These investigations were mostly completed in 2012. The construction of a new prayer chapel and mortuary chapel to the east of the existing church building, and north of the small graveyard commenced in 2013 and further monitoring was carried out at this stage.

The existing church building on this site is orientated north-south and dates from the mid-19th century. The original medieval church (DU012:023-02) that may have stood in this area would have had an east-west orientation. The site of a possible mound (DU012:023-03) is recorded within the church grounds but no physical evidence for this mound survives on site today. The archaeological investigations did not uncover any definitive evidence for St Finweis’ early medieval church or for the mound, but there was much disturbance from later activity on site. Despite this disturbance, investigations to the west of the existing church building revealed medieval structural remains, a ditch and pits as well as 18th/early 19th-century masonry walls (McQuade 2012).

In 2013 ground reduction works to the east of the existing church building uncovered the remains of two masonry walls and subsoil was revealed at a depth of c. 2.9m. An east-west orientated wall [39] abutted the north-eastern end of the existing church building and ran the full extent of the dig area (10.5m). Another wall [40] that ran south from wall [39] was located 0.5m from the church building. A wall is shown at this location on the second edition OS map (1866), suggesting that these two walls probably date from the late 19th century.

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