What is recorded here

Death followed St. Maelruan from the start, filling the curved ditch west of the church with people, memory and the ordinary weight of living. The graveyard preserves that old arc across Tallaght, while the new college rises beside it. To walk there is to touch the patience of centuries: love, loss, rain, faith and time, all buried together beneath one quiet Dublin field.

The probable position of the ecclesiastical enclosure which surrounded the monastery is indicated by the curvature of the present graveyard boundary on the SW side of the medieval parish church and the apparent continuation of that curvature across the road on the W side where it is thought to have continued around into the present priory lands. Test trenching in 1991 prior to construction of the new regional technical college failed to identify a corresponding section but two ditches were revealed which may be part of an inner enclosure. These had been in-filled in the 13th-14th-century (Wth 5-8m, D 1.4m). They were similar to concentric ditches identified to the SW of the present church boundary (Hayden 1991, 29; 1991, 17). In 1995 test trenching west of St. Maelruan'srevealed a single ditch (Wth 4.7m, D1.2m). A sherd of medieval pottery was found in the basal layer. (Mc Conway 1996, ) See DU021-037001-for report. Compiled by Geraldine Stout

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