Medieval artefacts found during €25m student block site dig in Cork to go on display

The Beneath our Feet interpretation of finds from a winter 2021/22 dig, going down 3m to reveal 12 medieval buildings and artefacts at Nos 92 to 95 North Main St, opens for Culture Night, September 19, at the street’s St Peter’s Church — itself built on medieval remains.

It combines visual art, oral history and talks, and includes an installation by the award-winning writer and artist Sarah Baume, amongst others.

Beneath our Feet comes exactly 30 years after a major exhibition of finds from the excavation by O’Callaghan Properties (OCP) of the North Main St shopping centre site/Kyrl’s Quay in 1995, which revealed 13th-century city gateways, walls, tower, slipway, and unearthed 10,000 artefacts.

Ironically, the North Main St shopping centre currently lies largely mothballed in recent years since anchor Dunnes withdrew, pending redevelopment by purchasers BMOR, with just its multi-storey carpark in daily use.

The same London-based BMOR successfully redeveloped the site across the street for the 279-student bedspace €25m Coleman Court development, which also yielded valuable finds to be outlined in the forthcoming Beneath our Feet collaboration with writers, artists, and archaeologists.

Delivered by Vision Contracting post-dig, BMOR’s purpose-built Coleman Court in a four-to-seven-storey block got its planning in 2020, with later design tweaks. Cork City Council got a 10-year affordable (half rent) beds deal for 16 units until 2033.

The site previously accommodated the Munster Furniture Centre, destroyed by an inferno in November 2008, and which lay idle for 15 years.

Also long idle, derelict, and dangerous are Nos 62-65 North Main St, now in Cork City Council ownership under the derelict sites legislation, having been placed on the Derelict Sites Register in 2015.

A City Hall spokesperson said it was hoped to have construction work on the four-buildings underway in 2026.

A query as to whether an archaeological dig will be required at this contentious eyesore site has been addressed to City Hall.

Meanwhile, Cork City Council archaeologist Ciara Brett said: “We know that archaeology interests the Cork public but, due to the rescue nature of the projects we engage in, they are rarely able to interact with the material and outcomes directly.

“By engaging with artists, some of whom have archaeological experience, we hope to interpret these narratives, of excavation, discovery, of imagining the past, of experiencing the materials from the past, telling both our own stories and the stories of Cork’s past as understood from the evidence we have uncovered.”

Ms Brett, along with artist and archaeologist John Sunderland, got Creative Ireland funding and Arts Council funding for the Beneath our Feet project’s interpretation via visual arts and oral history with listening excerpts as part of the month-long exhibition at St Peter’s Church close to the excavation site.

“It is, therefore, a fitting venue, as similar archaeology will literally be beneath the feet of anyone visiting the exhibition”.

Lane Purcell Archaeology conducted the dig at Nos 92-96 North Main St to a depth of 3m below street level, and 12 identifiable buildings from the medieval period — including stake-built, post and wattle, and sill-beam timber houses — were recorded and preserved in the waterlogged lower levels alongside organic materials such as wood and leather, as well as plant and insect remains, some of them now extinct.

“The site is a valuable window on the lives of medieval Cork people, offering evidence of everyday life and activities, as well as indicators of the wider environmental conditions from the 12th to the 14th centuries and beyond,” say the Beneath our Feet team which includes Sara Baume, artist and writer; John Sunderland, mixed media visual artist and archaeologist; Matt Durran, glass and ceramics sculptor; Penny Johnston, archaeobotanist, research scientist, and oral historian; and Eva Kourela, entomologist, researcher, and illustrator.