Medieval artefacts have been discovered in the courtyard quadrangle of Robert Gordon's College in Aberdeen.

The city council's Archaeological Unit worked on the Schoolhill site while while workmen re-landscaped the quadrangle as part of extensive building works over the summer.

It is rare for this type of soft-landscaping work to reveals archaeological remains, but because the area is known to be the site of the Dominican (Blackfriars) friary, an archaeological condition was placed on the planning application to ensure an archaeologist was present during the works.

Soon after the JCB started to strip grass and topsoil, medieval finds including pottery, floor tiles, mammal, fish and human bones, were discovered. After three days work at least two walls; surviving just as a trench filled with mortar and stones where the walls had been demolished, a hearth and possible drains were uncovered and recorded.

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It was not necessary to destroy these features during the work and so they were recorded by archaeologists and then re-covered with small stones used as a foundation for the new tarred surface. One of the walls had a line of stone roof tiles next to it where they had fallen during the demolition of the building.

The roof and floor tiles and the construction methods of the wall suggested that these were the remains of the Blackfriars friary.

The friary has not been investigated by archaeologists before, but there are records of remains being found during building works in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

No burials were found during this year's work, but a small pit was excavated which had been filled with broken human bones. These had presumably been found during previous building works or digs at the site and reburied. The bones will now be studied by a human bone specialist.

Aberdeen City Council's assistant archaeologist Alison Cameron said: "This is a very exciting and significant find. Now we can start to work out where the buildings were and what they looked like."

The Archaeological Unit has carried out extensive excavations at the Carmelite site in the Green and has recently uncovered some of the Greyfriars remains at Marischal College.

(GK/BMcc)