Digging For Old

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t wasn’t exactly the best week of 2018 to go excavate a dirty big Greystones field, but the hardy souls who had volunteered for the St Crispin’s dig were in fine fettle today.

This was the last of the various motley crews, tidying up and refilling the most-likely medieval ditch that lay just north of St Crispin’s Church, down the old Grove road.

The various volunteers throughout the week – pulled together by Greystones Tidy Towns, Rathdown Park and St Crispin’s Residents Association – had worked under difficult conditions, that constant rain making everything twice as slow and, when it came to the earth itself, about ten times as heavy.

Nonetheless, they all knew that this dig was important, given the deep history of the area in and around St Crispin’s. A history you can go explore in more detail here. And the ancient Rathdown townland that surrounds it here.

With an exhibition evening of the findings from this week-long dig due to be displayed and explained on Tuesday, November 20th, 8pm, at the Greystones Lawn Tennis Club, all will soon be revealed.

In the meantime, we managed to catch the man with the plans, archaeologist David McIlreavy, to find out more about what lies beneath…

You can find out more about St Crispin’s Cell here, about Rathdown Townland here, and about David McIlreavy’s medieval projects in Wicklow here.