Outlined — Unknown Townland

The medieval parish church (DU018-020082-) of St. Michael le Pole, formed the N boundary of a disused graveyard (dims. c. 14m N-S x 28m E-W) located SW of Dublin Castle between Great Ship Street and Chancery Lane. Church and graveyard described by Wheeler and Craig (1948, 28-9) as follows; 'The site is now occupied by a red-brick building of 1900 which was until recently St Bride's Protestant National Schools. Until 1944 the churchyard still existed as the school playground, with tombstones standing round the walls. In that year, however, it was taken over as a timber-stores by Messrs Dockrells, and the school closed. The approach from Great Ship Street is still partly open, marked by a tablet over the street-entry. As this tablet is now totally illegible from ground-level, we transcribe it as given in Carroll's Clergy of St. Bride's. Etc. S. MICHAEL'S LE POLE CHURCH YARD ENTRANCE TO - Here anciently stood the Church and the Round Tower [DU018-020083-] adjacent lay the Mill Pond or 'Pool', which gave name to these buildings and to the old city gate in Bride Street. S. BRIDE'S WIDOWS' ALMS HOUSE - Founded in Bride-street and Bull Alley A.D. 1683, in succession to an older Widows' House in Bride Street-opened here in 1786. S. BRIDE'S SCHOOL TEACHERS RESIDENCE - School established in Golden Lane and Arthur's Lane about 1700 A.D-moved to Little Ship Street 1746 - hither - 1796 - to Bride Street 1859. Here, in the above-named church when re-built, was the famed Latin School of the last century, in which HENRY GRATTAN and JOHN FITZGIBBON, EARL OF CLARE, were educated together. Marble Works, W.G.C. Mount Jerome, 1883'. Excavations in 1980 uncovered foundations of a 12th century church and integrated round tower type belfry (DU018-020083-). The site was used for burial prior to construction. Annotated 'G. yd. (dis.) on the 1863 ed. OSi 25-inch map. The results of the excavations carried out by Kieran Campbell and Margaret Gowen in 1980 were summarised as follows; 'Excavations by the Dublin Archaeological Research Team on behalf of Dodder Properties (Holdings) Ltd. took place over a nine-week period on a large site hounded by Ship Street Great, Ship Street Little, Bride Street, Chancery Lane and Golden Lane. Of the nine cuttings excavated five were concentrated on the site of the church of St. Michael le Pole, where three broad phases were recognised: 1. Pre-12th-century activity represented by postholes, pits, gullies, a lintel grave and other burials. 2. A 12th-century stone church and probable foundations of Round Tower belfry. The west gable of the church. 7.2m long and 0.9m wide, and foundation courses of adjoining parts of the north and south walls were uncovered. 3. Post-1682 reuse of the church as a schoolhouse (1706) and almshouse (1787), and eventual replacement by schoolhouse of 1900. Deposits of medieval and post-medieval date were found in cuttings on the margins of the site towards Bride Street, Ship Street Great and Golden Lane' (1980-84:0099 - St. Michael le Pole, Ship Street, Dublin; www.excavations.ie). Test excavation (licence No. 04E1030) was carried out on this site in 2004 (Excavations 2004, No. 547). This summary describes excavations carried out between March and September of 2005. The site is located on the eastern corner of Golden Lane and Chancery Lane within the former GE Capital Woodchester Bank complex, which was demolished as part of a new development. A key component of the development from an archaeological perspective was the exemption of the site of the church and graveyard of St Michael le Pole (as depicted on historic maps such as Bernard De Gomme’s map of 1673, John Rocque’s map of 1756 and the first edition of the OS map) from basemented development and the preservation of that portion of the monument along with its associated archaeological deposits in situ. The excavation was carried out on an area measuring 50m by 50m, the most northern section of the site was severely truncated by the construction of the Woodchester Bank building some twenty years earlier. The excavation sought to record all of the surviving archaeological deposits within the footprint of the basement of the new building. The site of St Michael le Pole and the growth of the city of Dublin Early ecclesiastic remains of the church of St Michael le Pole were identified and excavated by the Dublin Archaeological Research Team (DART) in 1981 (Gowen 2001). The church site dates from as early as the 8th century AD and remained as a place of worship up until the end of the 17th century, when it was converted into a school (ibid., 31). The foundation for a round tower and a church and the remains of a medieval graveyard were located during the excavation at the site in 1981 (ibid., 38). The city of Dublin grew in parallel with the church site and Chancery Lane is recorded as a street in the medieval period, dating from c. AD 1230. Golden Lane is first referenced in AD 1382 (Clarke 2002, 13). The site of St Michael le Pole was completely surrounded by post-medieval development in the city and no trace of the monument survives aboveground today. Early medieval cemetery of St Michael le Pole: A total of 272 burials were excavated on the Golden Lane site. The burials were located in a halo beyond and surrounding the graveyard boundary wall as depicted on the historic maps. The burials have provisionally been dated to the early medieval period (c. AD 700–1200). The vast majority (267) of these were located in the extreme north-east corner of the site in an area measuring 22m by 10m. This cemetery was clearly an element of the early church site at St Michael le Pole. The potential cultural associations of this pre-Norman church site are particularly intriguing, as the site appears to span both the early medieval and Viking Age, culturally and chronologically. No ditch or enclosing feature was identified cut into the boulder clay defining the extent of the cemetery. The burials were interred in the supine position as extended inhumations, orientated with the head to the west. Thus far the burials have only been dated by grave morphology and artefactual association. Numerous examples of ear-muff stones were noted at the site along with a variety of hand positions in common with other ‘Early Christian’ cemeteries in Ireland. The reuse of disturbed skulls as ear-muffs was a feature of the cemetery, as was the presence of plank lining around the graves. Additionally, the tight clustering of the burials (in a cemetery) is consistent with ‘Early Christian’ burial practices at church sites in Ireland. The discovery of stick pins associated with the graves indicates that burial in this portion of the cemetery continued into the 11th and 12th centuries. The provisional interpretation of the earliest phase of burial suggests that the church of St Michael le Pole is a pre-Viking Irish Early Christian church site. The presence of culturally Irish burial grave morphologies and burials with stick pins suggests that Christian burial continued in the cemetery immediately outside the Hiberno-Norse town. These are significant findings, both in terms of the debate on the site of the monastery of Dubh-Linn and with respect to the cultural background of the individuals interred in the cemetery in the Hiberno-Norse period (Gowen 2001, 13-52). See attached watercolour of Round Tower (DU018-020083-) with Schoolhouse and graveyard in the foreground built on site of medieval church (DU018-020082-) by Gabriel Beranger dated 1766. View of the Round Tower of St Michael le Pole beside the schoolhouse, which was built on the site of an earlier church on the condition that the tower was not to be pulled down. The tower was demolished after a storm in 1775. Courtesy and copyright of the National Library of Ireland (https://catalogue.nli.ie/Record/vtls000053498) NLI PD 1958 TX 5, National library of Ireland, The Old Tower of Michael of Pole, Dublin. A Collection of Drawings of the Pri