2022:933 - 26-31 & 33 Arran Street East & 14-20 Mary Street, Smithfield, Dublin 7, Dublin

The excavation was located at 26–32 Arran Street East and 14-20 Little Mary Street, Smithfield, Dublin 7. The dig uncovered a large assemeblage of medeival and post-medieval archaeolgical deposits and finds related to the monastery and its subsequent dissolution (O’Donovan 2025).

The archaeological excavations revealed the footprint of the western side of St Mary’s Abbey along Arran Street East in Dublin. The abbey was one of the most powerful and influential monastic foundations in Ireland and its buildings would have appeared as an equivalent to Christchurch on the northside of the city. Elements of the abbey church, portions of the abbey graveyard to the north of the church and the north-western inner precinct and boundary were discovered. The dig also uncovered a series of lime and tile kilns used in the construction, extension and renovation of the abbey from the 12th to the 16th century. The site was slowly demolished following its dissolution in 1539 when the abbey buildings were dismantled and quarried. The land was then parcelled into post-medieval property plots and later subsumed into the expanding modern city in the 17th and 18th centuries within the newly established city suburb around Capel Street and the Fruit Markets.
Historically St Mary’s Abbey is known to have been founded in 1139 as a daughter house to the Congregation of Savigny (Savigniac Order) of French Benedictine origin. The Order adopted Cistercian rule in 1147 and St Mary’s became a Cistercian House. The archaeological work has established that an early burial dates from the 11th century. This is an intriguing finding as it suggests the existence of a pre-Savigniac ecclesiastical foundation at the site prior to the arrival of the continental Savigniac monks at least a century later.
The archaeological dig also identified an early monastic church (Savigniac) with a later church built above it (Cistercian). At least 250 human burials were excavated within the church and to the north of the church within the abbey graveyard. The skeletal remains are derived from men, women and children and the analysis of the skeletal remains from an osteological, archaeological and demographic perspective is on-going. ‘High status’ stone-lined burials were identified within a stone portico or narthex built adjoining the western end of the church. The burials within the narthex included infants, adolescents and adult inhumation burials, some within elaborate stone-lined graves.
In addition to the surviving foundation courses of abbey’s walls, robbed-out foundation trenches were also identified which indicated the alignment and size of the buildings in tandem with the surviving masonry. These remains were all identified below the original floor levels of the medieval church. In-situ tiled floors did not survive, however significant quantities of broken decorated floor tiles dating from the 12th to the 16th century were recovered from the archaeological soils. A small number of in-situ dressed Dundry moulded fragments were recorded in the surviving walls, however a large and important collection of decorated moulded architectural stone was recovered from later disturbed contexts. A substantial collection and variety of metal, ceramic, stone, bone, leather, roof slate and glass artefacts were recovered from all levels on the archaeological dig. This reflects its occupation from AD 1100 to 1900. Specialist environmental work was undertaken on disarticulated animal bone and charcoal. The decorated masonry remains coupled with the floor tiles assist in the understanding of styles associated with the decoration of the monastery as it grew and expanded up to its closure in 1539. The dissolution was so effective that one of Ireland’s greatest monasteries disappeared beneath the city. The excavations also uncovered the foundations of later 17th-, 18th- and 19th-century dwellings built after and above the buried medieval remains.

Reference:

O’Donovan, E. 2025 Excavations at St Mary’s abbey, Dublin: the archaeology of Ireland’s premier Cistercian house in Medieval Dublin XX: Proceedings of the Friends of Medieval Dublin Symposium 2022-3, Seán Duffy (ed), Four Courts Press, Dublin, 15-82