2022:935 - 2–16 TARA STREET, DUBLIN 2, Dublin

An archaeological excavation was undertaken at 2–16 Tara Street, Dublin 2 in advance of a mixed-use development. Excavation commenced on site on 12 April 2022 and was completed by 16 May 2022.

The site is located immediately south of the early 18th-century quay wall of George’s Quay (DU018-020458). The excavations at Tara Street uncovered nine 17th-century ‘Dutch Billy’-style houses, with associated cobbled and red brick floor surfaces and corner fireplaces. Outlying structures were found at the rear of the house plots, comprising a coal cellar and latrine, possible storage rooms, two possible kitchens or sculleries, an enclosed yard, a possible warehouse, two wells and a large cistern. The cistern could be indicative of small-scale water-based industrial activity (e.g., fulling).

Several of the houses were modernised during the later post-medieval/early modern period, mostly comprising the remodelling of the original fireplaces and the construction of new tile floor surfaces. Following abandonment, the houses and associated structures were covered with demolition material and clinker.

Finds from the site are all post-medieval/early modern in date and comprise pottery sherds from crockery, jars, cosmetic pots, and colanders; sherds of a Bartmann jug and Westerwald vessel; a glass onion wine bottle; a painted chunk of wall plaster; and several clay pipe fragments.

Disarticulated human remains were retrieved from the underlying garden soil, from the overlying post-medieval clinker layer, and from a layer found between two storage rooms. These remains could be associated with a burial site identified and excavated at Poolbeg Street in 1992, which uncovered twelve 18th-century inhumations connected to a Lutheran burial ground.