News & Events
Beneath Our Feet Art and Archaeology Exhibition
Interpreting Cork’s Medieval Past
20th September – 8th October 2025, St Peter’s, North Main Street, Cork
In the winter of 2021-22 a team of archaeologists, under the direction of Avril Purcell, Lane Purcell Archaeology excavated a large site, 92-96 North Main Street, in the heart of Cork city, in advance of a development for student accommodation. The site extended downwards to a depth of approximately three metres below street level and a total of twelve identifiable buildings from the medieval period, including stake-built, post and wattle and sill-beam timber houses were recorded.
The site is a valuable window on the lives of medieval Cork people, offering evidence of everyday life and activities from the 12th to the 14th centuries and beyond.
In 2024, Cork City Council Archaeologist Ciara Brett and the artist and archaeologist John Sunderland received Creative Ireland Funding to undertake a project which would interpret the archaeology at the site at North Main Street through visual arts.
The aim of this project is to bring the information gained from the excavation to the wider Cork public through an engaging and imaginative exhibition with a series of public engagement initiatives that investigate and interpret the findings of the excavation through the dual lenses of archaeology and art.
The exhibition, will run from the 20th September until the 4th October and will include an expansive installation of painted boards, by Sarah Baume, artist and writer, in the rough form of an altarpiece creating an ‘iconography’ medieval Cork; sculptural pieces by the UK-based glass artist, Matt Durran, photographs of artefacts from North Main Street, pressed flora, a sensitively assembled installation of bracken and bone, recordings of oral histories by some of the specialists involved with the excavation, and a programme of talks.
Not only, we hope, will it offer the public a chance to encounter at close quarters an archaeological excavation, and the research that follows, but to appreciate the lesser-appreciated beauty of the town dweller’s detritus and what it can reveal about the daily realities of life for ordinary Corkonians, our medieval ancestors.