ABSTRACT
After a 43-year hiatus in which no new archaeological work took place in the Cellar, the first investigation of the Sisters of Nazareth convent by a team of professional archaeologists began in 2006, 125 years after the first discovery of a pre-modern feature at the site. Since the 1880s, the nuns had suspected that there must be an undiscovered natural spring in the convent grounds. The humidity of the Large Cave and the number of pre-modern features concerned with water management, are most easily explained by the presence of such a spring, and the topographical location of the site makes the suggestion that water was channelled there from Mary’s Well highly unlikely. Re-examination in 2008 of one of the tunnels extending beneath the southern side of the convent identified a previously unrecognised spring. Although unpublished, the tunnel has long been known to the nuns and appears on Senes’s unpublished plans as the circular aperture of a cistern.
