What is recorded here

Abbeyland South holds a clay-bonded wall and drifting pits where St Mary’s fell silent after 1540. Copper coins and an inscribed finger-ring place ordinary life there before cavalry horses ever stampeded across the field. The abbey’s ghost did not vanish; it changed shape, became a boundary, a barracks, a forgotten address.

Situated on the S bank of a NW-SE section of the Blackwater River and c. 100m NW of the site of St Mary’s Augustinian abbey (ME025-024----). Archaeological testing (98E0463) by N. Brady uncovered fragments of post-medieval structures dated by a collection of potsherds, three copper coins and a fragment of an inscribed finger-ring to the early to mid-seventeenth century (excavations.ie 1998:498). The structures were utilised in the period between the Suppression of St Mary’s in 1540 and the conversion of the site into a cavalry barracks c. 1700. A small excavated area (dims c. 10m x c. 10m) uncovered a NE-SW post-medieval double-faced and clay-bonded wall (Wth 0.75m; H 0.4m; L 7m plus) with an external drain (Wth 0.4m; D 0.3m). There was no return and it may have been a property boundary. A rectangular pit (dims c. 1m x c. 1m plus; D 0.6m) and a larger complex of intercutting pits (D 0.9m) that may be related were only sampled. (Brady 1999, 8-11) Compiled by: Michael Moore Date of upload: 29 March 2023 Brady, N. 1999 Archaeological Excavation at Abbeyland South, Archaeological recording at Blackcaslte Demesne, Navan Inner Relief Road. Phase 2A. Licence: 98E0463. Unpublished report, Valerie J. Keeley Archaeological Consultancy.

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