2022:515 - St Mary's Abbey, Ferns Demesne, Ferns, Wexford

In June-July 2022 the Irish Archaeology Field School undertook the second season of excavations at Ferns Demesne townland in Ferns, Co. Wexford. The site is located adjacent to St Mary’s Abbey, a recorded monument which forms part of a significant multi-period complex (WX015-003004-, WX015-003031-, WX015-003032-, WX015-003033- etc.) The site was founded by St Aidan around the turn of the seventh century and also contains early medieval crosses and cross slabs, a twelfth-century Augustinian Abbey (St Mary’s Abbey), and a thirteenth-century medieval cathedral (St Edan’s Cathedral) within its wider confines.
The excavations were conducted under Ministerial Consent (C000967; excavation and detection references E005108 and R000521) as the second season of a three-year research excavation, running from 2021-2023. In 2022 two new cuttings, Cuttings 3 and 4 (in addition to two initial cuttings in 2021), were opened to further investigate findings from the 2021 season (for details on the 2021 cuttings see bulletin 2021:499).
Cutting 3 was excavated across the possible eastern claustral range south of St Mary's Abbey (WX015-003004), with the Abbey having been confirmed as claustral in the 2021 excavations. Cutting 3 confirmed the sub-surface presence of an eastern range adjoining St Mary's Church, with the range seemingly dating to the twelfth to fourteenth centuries. The range was confirmed as being c.5m wide, defined by two large 1.25m wide walls and containing several internal features, including a rough floor surface, burnt deposits and a fire-pit. The fire pit is particularly instructive as it may indicate that Cutting 3 was positioned across the calefactory of the monastery. The east range was laid out after a period of burial in this area of the site, with one of the range walls cutting through a confirmed burial and possibly cutting two more unexcavated graves; this confirmed archaeological sequence raises intriguing questions as to the phasing of the church, burials and the claustral court on site. Unfortunately, a cloistral arcade or ambulatory were not definitively confirmed on site but these features will be further explored in 2023.
Cutting 4 was excavated to further assess a possible double-aisled structure (WX015-003033-); excavations in 2021 confirmed the presence of this structure (which was clarified as high medieval in date) but did not ascertain its function. The western limits of this structure were assessed in 2022 and dated to the twelfth-fourteenth century (based on recovered pottery), a finding consistent with a thirteenth-century coin recovered in the 2021 excavations. The structure's western limits were confirmed as being even more extensively disturbed and quarried than the eastern limits assessed in 2021. Of note a well-constructed keyhole kiln, which is tentatively identified as a pottery/tile kiln (pending further analyses), was confirmed as being bonded into the central wall of the building and may be crucial to the overall interpretation of the structure's function. The early medieval outer monastic enclosure was again uncovered in Cutting 4; this feature was already assessed and dated in Cutting 2 in 2021, so was not excavated in 2022.
Artefacts from the 2022 excavation primarily date from the twelfth to fourteenth centuries, matching the historical existence of high-medieval structures at the site. By far the most abundant finds included Leinster Cooking Ware, Wexford-type coarse ware, Wexford Type Ware, Ham Green A and B Ware, Saintonge, Saintonge Sgraffito, Minety Ware, etc. Amongst the most notable finds in 2022 were an early medieval dress pin, a lead came (suggesting glazed windows in the claustral ranges), several pottery ‘wasters’ or ‘spacers’ (indicative of an onsite kiln) and a number of architectural fragments including a fine splayed window-sill with bar hole.
Excavations at the site will resume for their final season in June 2023, after which a full bulletin, report and publication of the site can be prepared.

Johns Hall, Birr, Co. Offaly