Burial ground

The National Monuments Service's description

S of the Town Hall and E of Dowd's Lane, and 30m E of the medieval town wall. Henry (1994, 75) describes, 'A total of 23 articulated human skeletal remains were found. The disarticulated skeletal remains consisted of scattered fragments of one of three individuals which were disturbed by the building of a wall that extended through part of the site. The burials were in pits and the majority were buried in groups of two or more. Three individuals had separate graves and were unassociated with other burials. All of the remains were laid out in an ordered fashion and were aligned east-west. A majority faced east'. Fifteen individuals could be identified as males, between the ages of 18 and 45 (ibid.). Dental records from sixteen individuals suggested they were clay pipe smokers, a large number of clay pipe stem frags. and bowls were found with the remains (ibid.). Two pistol balls were found in the thoraxes of two burials (ibid.). Three spherical buttons found beside one skeleton have mid-17th century associations (ibid.). A large quantity of pottery sherds was also recovered (ibid.). The excavator suggested a date of some time after the mid 1600s for the burials (ibid.).

Compiled by: Jean Farrelly

Date of upload: 26 August 2011

References

Henry, M. 1994 Urban, Town Hall, Parnell St., Clonmel. In I. Bennett (ed.) Excavations 1993: summary accounts of archaeological excavations in Ireland. Bray.
Wordwell.