Church, Balgriffin Park, Co. Dublin

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Church, Balgriffin Park, Co. Dublin

Somewhere beneath the grass of a north Dublin housing estate lies the outline of a medieval church that was already falling apart four centuries ago.

The remains at Balgriffin Park are not dramatic in the conventional sense; there is no roofless shell to photograph, no carved doorway to admire. What survives is largely invisible, detectable only because archaeologists went looking for it before the houses went up, and found more than expected.

The church's history reaches back to at least 1178, when, according to the historian D'Alton, it was confirmed in its titles by Archbishop O'Toole, the same Lorcán Ua Tuathail who is venerated as a patron saint of Dublin. By the time of the Regal Visitations in 1630, a series of official ecclesiastical inspections carried out across Ireland, both the church and its chancel were recorded as ruinous. What that ruin looked like above ground is now impossible to say, but below ground the picture became considerably clearer when geophysical survey and test excavation were carried out in advance of the housing development in the early 2000s. A substantial curving ditch, some 4.75 metres wide and 1.3 metres deep, was identified enclosing the site of the church. This kind of circular or curving enclosure is a recognised feature of early Irish ecclesiastical sites, often marking the boundary of a sacred precinct. Two smaller linear ditches were also found nearby, with similar fills. Among the finds were several sherds of medieval pottery and a medieval glass bead, small objects that give the site a quietly human quality.

The remains lie within the open green space of the Balgriffin Park housing development in the Baldoyle and Clongriffin area of north County Dublin. There is nothing formally marked out for visitors, and the archaeology is entirely subsurface, so what you are really doing is reading a landscape rather than inspecting a monument. The curving line of the old enclosing ditch may be faintly legible in the ground's topography if you know what to look for, though it takes some patience. The site is accessible as part of the surrounding open space, and its interest lies less in what can be seen than in what the investigations confirmed is there, tucked beneath an ordinary patch of suburban grass.

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