What is recorded here

King's Island holds a Dominican burial ground where articulated bones still face east and west, proving the priory church stretched farther than the standing wall suggests. Men and women died there, were washed, laid in cloth, and forgotten beneath layers later cities scraped away. The trenches reopened what Limerick had buried, not to judge the dead but to show the living that kings and priests shared the same narrow strip of earth.

Excavations carried out by Aegis Archaeology under licence No. 00E0661 identified the location of a burial ground associated with St Saviour's Dominican Priory (LI005-017047-). The results of these excavations were summarised as following; 'Eleven trenches were dug by machine and by hand in an area just south of the medieval Dominican priory, in advance of a proposed development. Five yielded archaeological material. Trenches 1 and 2 exposed the lower courses of the limestone town wall, while human remains were exposed in Trenches 2, 10 and 11. Only those in Trenches 2 and 11 were articulated, in situ and orientated in the usual east–west direction. At the northern end of Trench 10, the foundations of a wall were discovered, which were interpreted as the southern wall of the medieval church of the priory. This wall lay c. 8m from the extant northern wall of the church. The remainder of the trenches showed that the site had been disturbed in the past and the archaeological layers had been removed extensively' (www.excavations.ie). Compiled by: Caimin O'Brien Date of upload: 25 November 2019

Medieval Christian burial ground, 13th–16th century. Associated with St Saviour's Dominican Priory, it provides insight into monastic and lay burial practices in Limerick during the late medieval period.

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