Progress Report. Day 16. Tomorrow (Friday) we close up Trenches 10 and 12. In spite of the rain, the dig has been very successful, with 16 in situ burials excavated in 10 and samples collected for further analysis. Even the many fragments of disturbed human...
Progress Report. Day 12. It was too much to hope for three weeks of good weather. The heavy rain on Friday night filled the bottom of Trench 11, and the team of wonderful volunteers had a couple of hours of heavy work to prepare it for the Open Day.Their work was...
Progress Report. Day 9. After a week of clearing the disturbed layers in Trench 10 round the Sanctuary Stone, the diggers have now uncovered relatively undisturbed in situ burials, including a surprising number of children. These will be excavated very carefully....
Progress Report. Day 6. So far, the weather has been good for digging. One very hot day (Wednesday 8th) and one cut short by heavy rain (Thursday 9th). The forecast is good for next week and it looks as if we will not need to bail out trenches again. Apart from...
Progress Report, Day 3. We knew from 2018 that it would take several days of patient trowelling to reach our goal: the Early Church cemetery. This year we have been speeded along the way by Andy Hough, who removed the turf from three long trenches with his digger. ...
The Big Dig 4-25 September 2021 Clare Ellis, accompanied by the bone expert Angela Boyle, is coming back to Lismore to complete the work we started at the Church Glebe in 2018, exploring the Early Church burials. This year's dig will run from 4-25 September 2021 and...
Weʼre raising £2,496 to help fund Community Archaeology on Lismore to explore St Moluag's Monastery Help us to explore St Moluag's Early Church Monastery on Lismore Tradition has it that Moluag brought Christianity from Ireland to the Isle of Lismore in the...
4-25 September 2021 The late, and greatly missed, Hugh MacPherson (pictured above) was a keen participant in our archaeological digs on Lismore. The CELM Board has decided to devote his generous bequest for 2021 to support the three-week dig in September, when we hope...
Partnership between Lismore Historical Society and Lismore Parish Church. Funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund In 2016 and 2017, the Community Dig aimed at revealing what was left of the cathedral nave and assessing the condition of the remaining masonry. We knew what...
This year we are concentrating on the Celtic Church on Lismore. Passers-by will have seen three 16m trenches in the South Glebe field where we are trying to establish the boundaries of the old graveyard, looking for "finds" from early medieval times, and...
The 2017 Big Nave Dig, led again by Clare Ellis of Argyll Archaeology, will take place from 15th to 22nd July. The aim is to expose more of the walls of the nave, to establish the state of the masonry and to take mortar samples to determine its age. Dr Ellis will be...
There will be a very full report of the dig in due course but here is the story of the week in pictures, made possible by the cheerful work of a great team of volunteer diggers, caterers, drivers… This is only the start of the project. There are important things to...