That single detail, quiet and personal, anchors an otherwise puzzling group of burials that turned up during construction work in 1993, just outside the old town wall, in an area known as Burgagery-Lands. Nine individuals were present at minimum, six of them in sufficiently good condition to be recorded as articulated skeletons. Five of those were oriented east to west, as Christian burial convention required, but one lay north to south, an orientation that sits outside the norm and has no straightforward explanation. Two of the burials contained clay pipes, and two pairs of individuals had been buried alongside one another.

The excavation, carried out under licence in 1993, raised more questions than it resolved. All six individuals whose sex could be determined were male, and in no case was it possible to establish how they had died. The excavator proposed a connection to a jail that once stood on Lough Street, opposite what is now St Peter and Paul's Roman Catholic church. That gaol was built in the late 1600s and demolished in 1790, a period that aligns broadly with the coin found beside the north-south burial. If the speculation holds, these may be the remains of prisoners, paupers, or others whose deaths went unrecorded in any formal way. The full extent of the burial ground was never determined, meaning further burials may remain undisturbed beneath the ground nearby.