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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 April 2016
Although a relatively young subject, the historiography of Irish architecture has had a remarkably significant impact on the manner in which particular styles have been interpreted and valued. Since the genesis of the topic in the mid-eighteenth century, specific styles of architecture have been inextricably connected with the political history of the country, and each has been associated with the political and religious affiliations of its patrons. From the mid-nineteenth century, the focus on identifying an Irish ‘national’ architecture became particularly strong, with Early Christian and Romanesque architecture firmly believed to imbue ‘the spirit of native genius’, while Gothic, viewed as the introduction of the Anglo-Norman invader, was seen as marking the end of ‘Irish’ art. Inevitably, with such a strong motivation behind them, early texts were keen to find structures that were untouched by the hand of the colonizer as exemplars of the ‘national architecture’. Scholars, including the pioneering George Petrie (1790–1866) in works such as his 1845 study of the round towers of Ireland, believed that through historical research he and others were the first to understand the ‘true value’ of these buildings and that any former interest in them had been purely in their destruction, rather than in their restoration or reconstruction. It was believed that such examples of early medieval architecture and sculpture as had survived had done so despite, rather than because of, the efforts of former ages, and, although often in ruins, the remains could be interpreted purely in terms of the date of their original, medieval, creation.
Informed by such studies, from the mid-nineteenth century a movement grew to preserve and consolidate a number of threatened Romanesque buildings with the guiding philosophy of preserving the monuments as close to their original ‘pre-colonial’ form as possible. Consolidation of the ruins of the Nuns’ Church at Clonmacnoise (Co. Offaly) is traditionally amongst the earliest and most celebrated of these endeavours, undertaken by the Kilkenny and Southeast Ireland Archaeological Society in the 1860s, setting a precedent for both the type of monument and method of preservation that was to become the focus of activity from the 1870s, and thus for the first State initiatives in architectural conservation.
1 Antiquarian studies were much slower to take a hold in Ireland than in England. William Camden’s Britannia (London, 1607) included some references to Ireland, and Molyneaux’s survey of 1681 (TCD MS 883/1–2 also contains observations of an antiquarian nature, although the survey’s accounts were only (partially) published in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Similarly, Thomas Dineley’s account of Ireland, c. 1675–80 (NLI MS 392), remained unpublished until the nineteenth century. It was not until the latter part of the eighteenth century that texts began to attempt a differentiation between styles of architecture, linking them with the history of the country. See, for example, Anderson, James, The Constitutions of the Antient and Honourable Fraternity of Free and Accepted Masons. Containing their History, Charges, Regulations, &c. … For the Use of the Lodges (London, 1756)Google Scholar, chapter 8; Youngs, M., ‘The Origin and Theory of the Gothic Arch’, The Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy, 3 ([1787]-1800), pp. 55–88 Google Scholar; Grose, Francis, Antiquities of Ireland, 2 vols (London, 1791 and 1795)Google Scholar; and Bell, Thomas, An Essay on the Origin and Progress of Gothic Architecture I…] (Dublin and London, 1829)Google Scholar, which are amongst the earliest works to clearly delineate between ‘Saxon’, ‘Norman’, ‘Gothic’ and Classical styles specific to Ireland.
2 Comment made by John O’Connell, patron of Honan Hostel Chapel, Cork, built in the Celtic Revival Style; The Honan Chapel: A Golden Vision, ed. Virginia Teehan and Elizabeth Wincott Heckett (Cork, 2004), p. 3.
3 Power, Patrick, Early Christian Ireland: A Manual of Irish Christian Archaeology (Dublin, 1925), p. 34 Google Scholar. For the background to this, see Sheehy, Jeanne, The Rediscovery of Ireland’s Past: The Celtic Revival 1830–1930 (London, 1980)Google Scholar; and Hourihane, Colum, Gothic Art in Ireland 1169–1550 (London and New Haven, 2003), pp. 19–34.Google Scholar
4 Petrie, George, The Ecclesiastical Architecture of Ireland Anterior to the Norman Invasion Comprising an Essay on the Origins and Uses of the Round Towers in Ireland (Dublin, 1845)Google Scholar. See also O’Neill, Henry, Illustrations of the Most Interesting Crosses of Ancient Ireland (Dublin, 1857), p. iii.Google Scholar
5 Emerick, Keith, ‘Whitby and Clonmacnoise’, in Clonmacnoise Studies II: Seminar Papers 1998, ed. King, Heather (Dublin, 2003), pp. 209–12.Google Scholar
6 For a brief introduction to the State care of ancient monuments, see Lohan, Rena, Guide to the Archives of the Office of Public Works (Dublin, 1994), pp. 85–87 Google Scholar. The best general introductions to conservation and restoration policy and practice are both unpublished masters dissertations: MacRory, Rachel, ‘The Evolution of Policy for the Conservation of Historic Monuments in Ireland’ (Master in Urban and Building Conservation thesis, University College Dublin, 1994)Google Scholar; and Doyle, Aine, ‘The Conservation of Ruins in Ireland c.1850–1900’ (Master in Urban and Building Conservation thesis, University College Dublin, 2003).Google Scholar
7 For seventeenth-century attitudes to medieval architecture in England and France, see Bizzarro, Tina Waldeier, Romanesque Architectural Criticism (Cambridge, 1992)Google Scholar; and for England, Piggott, Stuart, ‘Antiquarian Thought in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries’, in English Historical Thought in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, ed. Fox, Levi (London and New York, 1956), pp. 93–114 Google Scholar; Aston, Margaret, ‘English Ruins and English History: The Dissolution and the Sense of the Past’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institute, 36 (1973), pp. 231–55 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Buchanan, Alexandrina, ‘Interpretations of Medieval Architecture C.1550-C.1750’, in Gothic Architecture and its Meanings 1550–1830, ed. Hall, Michael (Reading, 2002), pp. 27–52 Google Scholar. For the re-use of medieval monastic buildings, see, for example, Howard, Maurice, The Early Tudor Country House (London, 1987), pp. 136–62 Google Scholar, and for secular architecture, Johnson, Matthew, ‘Reconstructing Castles and Refashioning Ideas’, in The Familiar Past? Archaeologies of Later Medieval Britain, ed. Tarlow, Sarah and West, Susie (London, 1999), pp. 69–86.Google Scholar
8 For a summary of Roman contact with Ireland, see Martino, Vittorio di, Roman Ireland (Cork, 2003)Google Scholar. For the introduction of Romanesque to Ireland, see Gem, Richard, ‘St Flarmán’s Oratory at Killaloe: a Romanesque Building of c.1100 and the Patronage of King Muirchertach Ua Briain’, in Ireland and Europe in the Twelfth Century; Reform and Renewal, ed. Bracken, Damian and Riain-Raedel, Dagmar Ó (Dublin, 2006), pp. 74–105.Google Scholar
9 Carragáin, Tomás Ó, ‘Skeuomorphs and Spolia: the Presence of the Past in Irish pre-Romanesque Architecture’, in Making and Meaning in Insular Art, ed. Moss, Rachel (Dublin, 2007), pp. 95–109 Google Scholar; Rachel Moss, ‘A Twelfth-Century Renaissance? Irish Romanesque Sculpture and the Insular Tradition’, in Making and Meaning, ed. Moss, pp. 126–41.
10 For the historiography of Romanesque and the earliest uses of the term, see Cocke, Thomas, ‘Rediscovery of the Romanesque’, in English Romanesque Art 1066–1200, ed. Zarnecki, George, Holt, Janet and Holland, Tristram (London, 1984), pp. 360–66 Google Scholar; Bizzarro, Romanesque Architectural Criticism.
11 For Boyle’s background and political career, see Canny, Nicholas, The Upstart Earl: a Study of the Social and Mental World of Richard Boyle first Earl of Cork (Cambridge, 1982)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Papers relevant to Boyle’s building projects in Ireland are at Chatsworth, Lismore papers xviii, xxv, xxvi, xxvii, and in the National Library of Ireland MSS 897, 6898, 6900, 6241, 6243. Some of these papers have been published in The Lismore Papers, 1st series, 5 vols (London, 1886), 2nd series, 5 vols, ed. Alexander Bullock Grosart (London, 1888). His patronage of the arts in Ireland is the subject of an unpublished MA thesis, Cathal Moore, ‘The Artistic Patronage of Sir Robert Boyle, First Earl of Cork’ (University of London, Courtauld Institute, 1990).
12 Chatsworth, Lismore Papers iii, no. 131, quoted in Loeber, Rolf, ‘Early Classicism in Ireland: Architecture Before the Georgian Era’, Architectural History, 22 (1979), pp. 49–63 (p. 52).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
13 Smith, Charles, The Ancient and Present State of the County and City of Waterford. Containing a Natural, Civil, Ecclesiastical, Historical and Topographical Description Thereof, 2nd edn (Dublin, 1773), p. 32.Google Scholar
14 For a discussion of the arch stones in their Romanesque context, see O’Keeffe, Tadhg, ‘Lismore and Cashel: Reflections on the Beginnings of Romanesque Architecture in Munster’, Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, 124 (1994), pp. 118–52 (pp. 127–28).Google Scholar
15 Smith, History of Waterford, p. 32. It has been suggested that the portico was the work of the second Earl. However, Boyle’s diary in 1627 describes the construction of ‘the porch before the hall dore’ at Lismore, an activity which lasted almost a month.
16 12 February 1622/23, I agreed with my carpenters to take awf the roof of my gatehouse, to have it bwylt one storie higher, and to make and lay one fflowr more and to sett on the same roof again for xxx(s) ser’, Grosart, Lismore Papers, ser. 1, vol. 2, p. 70. Chatsworth, Lismore Papers vol. xxv, fol. 321.
17 Walley, NLI 6898.
18 Walley, NLI 6898.
19 Walley, NLI 6898, Chatsworth Lismore Papers, xxvii, fol. 2; Grosart, Lismore Papers ser. 1, vol. iv, p. 6. Fragments of Romanesque sculpture are displayed at the cathedral and also built into the fabric of the wall visible in the roof-space; however, the earliest in situ architecture dates to the thirteenth century.
20 Walley, NLI 6243.
21 Tait, Clodagh, ‘Colonising Memory: Manipulations of Death Burial and Commemoration in the Career of Richard Boyle, First Earl of Cork (1566–1643)’, Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, 101C, no. 4 (2001), pp. 107–34.Google Scholar
22 Tait, ‘Colonising Memory’, pp. 110–12.
23 A parallel can be drawn here with the 1570 ‘restoration’ of Strongbow’s tomb at Christchurch Cathedral, Dublin, by Sir Henry Sidney, Lord Deputy to Ireland. The original tomb, destroyed by the partial collapse of the cathedral in 1562, was replaced by a similar one, probably moved from Drogheda, north of Dublin. Its restoration is commemorated by a plaque in the adjacent wall indicating Sidney’s concern with associating himself with the ‘founder’s’ tomb. Located close to where the Holy Cross of Christchurch had stood until the Reformation, the tomb subsequently became the focus for the swearing of oaths, providing it with the additional role of a quasi-relic. Kenneth Milne, Christchurch Cathedral; a History (Dublin, 2000), pp. 178, 231.
24 The north and south transept arches of the cathedral, which remain in situ, date from the thirteenth century, as do the clustered columns of the south transept and the plinth moulding on the exterior of the south wall of the chancel.
25 Rowan has described this doorway as a ‘vigorous exercise in Renaissance work’, suggesting the influence of the doorways at the Old College Glasgow in the design. Rowan, Alistair, The Buildings of Ireland: North-West Ulster (London, 1979), p. 225 Google Scholar. For an illustration of the doorway, see Historic Monuments of Northern Ireland: An Introduction Guide, ed. Anne Hamlin (Belfast, 1987), p. 58.
26 Grossart, Lismore Papers, ser. 1, vol. ii, p. 285.
27 Grossart, Lismore Papers, ser. 2, vol. v, p. 128.
28 Watson, David, Lord Arundel and his Circle (London and New Haven, 1985), pp. 77–96.Google Scholar
29 Howarth, David, ‘Lord Arundel as an Entrepreneur of the Arts’, Burlington Magazine, 122 (1980), pp. 690–92 Google Scholar. There are also a number of references to Arundel in Boyle’s diaries, but none that relate specifically to discussions on art.
30 Cocke, Thomas, ‘Monuments of Power — the Rediscovery of the Romanesque in 17th Century England’, Country Life, 175 (1984), pp. 1778–79 (p. 1778).Google Scholar
31 Cocke, ‘Monuments of Power’, pp. 1778–79; Cocke, Thomas, ‘Pre-Nineteenth Century Attitudes in England to Romanesque Architecture’, Journal of the British Archaeological Association, 36 (1973), pp. 72–97 (p.74).Google Scholar
32 Paor, Liam de, ‘Excavations at Mellifont Abbey’, Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, 68C, no. 2 (1969), pp. 109–64 (pp. 123, 135).Google Scholar
33 Stalley, Roger, ‘Decorating the Lavabo: Late Romanesque Sculpture from Mellifont Abbey’, Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, 96C, no. 7 (1996), pp. 237–64 (pp. 254–55)Google Scholar. For comparison with the conversion of English monasteries following the suppression, see Howard, Maurice, The Early Tudor Country House: Architecture and Politics 1490–1550 (London, 1987), pp. 136–62.Google Scholar
34 Quinlan, Margaret, ‘The Main Guard Clonmel, The Rediscovery of a Seventeenth-Century Courthouse’, Bulletin of the Irish Georgian Society, 36 (1994), pp. 4–29.Google Scholar
35 The term ‘tholsel’, still in common use in an Irish context, refers to a building that was used variously as a guildhall, tollbooth or borough courthouse. A good idea of the interior appearance of the building can be gleaned from an inventory of Ormond’s goods, written in 1675, which includes Clonmel. NLI MS 2527, fols 78–83, published in Fenlon, Jane, Goods and Chattels; a Survey of Early Household Inventories in Ireland (Dublin, 2003), pp. 80–86.Google Scholar
36 Fenion, Jane, ‘Episodes of Magnificence: The Material Works of the Dukes of Ormonde’, in The Dukes of Ormonde 1610–1745, ed. Barnard, Toby and Fenlon, Jane (Woodbridge, 2000), pp. 137–60 (pp. 141–42).Google Scholar
37 Craig, Maurice, Dublin 1660–1860 (Dublin, 1980), p. 13.Google Scholar
38 For the broader context of civic architecture in seventeenth-century Ireland, see McParland, Edward, Public Architecture in Ireland (New Haven and London, 2000) (pp. 26–32).Google Scholar
39 McParland, Public Architecture, p. 31.
40 Loeber, Rolf, A Biographical Dictionary of Architects in Ireland (London, 1981), p. 96 Google Scholar; Quinlan, ‘The Main Guard Clonmel’, p. 7.
41 Conservation work was carried out by Margaret Quinlan Architects. I am grateful to Margaret Quinlan for the many discussions that I have had with her regarding the use of salvaged stone in the building.
42 These elements are now on public display in the building.
43 For example, Holy Trinity, Waterford and St Mary’s, Limerick. It is possible that Christchurch Cathedral Dublin may also have had an earlier arcaded nave than the fragmentary thirteenth-century one that survives today; see Stalley, Roger, ‘The Construction of the Medieval Cathedral, c.1030–1250’, in Christchurch Cathedral Dublin; a History, ed. Milne, Kenneth (Dublin, 2000), pp. 53–74 (pp. 55–58).Google Scholar
44 Extents of Monastic Possessions, 1540–1, ed. Newport B. White (Dublin, 1943), p. 337.
45 Ware, James, Coenobia Cisterciensa Hiberniae (1626), printed by Gilbert, J. T. in Cartularies of St Mary’s Abbey, Dublin, 2 vols (London, 1884), II, p. 224.Google Scholar
46 The Civil Survey A.D. 1654–1656. Vol. 1; County of Tipperary: Eastern and Southern Baronies, ed. Robert C. Simington (Dublin, 1931), p. 307.
47 Bradshaw, Brendan, The Dissolution of the Religious Orders in Ireland under Henry VIII (Cambridge, 1974)Google Scholar. For the continued use of western friaries and its impact on their architecture, see Stalley, Roger ‘The End of the Middle Ages: Gothic Survival in Sixteenth-century Connacht’, Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, 133 (2003), pp. 5–23 Google Scholar. For the repair of a number of Franciscan friaries in 1604, see SirCox, Richard, Hibernia Anglicana or the History of Ireland from the Conquest thereof by the English to the Present Time, 2 vols (London, 1689-90), II, pp. 9–10.Google Scholar
48 ‘Clonmacnoise was plundered and devastated by the English of Athlone; and the large bells were taken from the Cloigtheach. There was not left, moreover, a bell, small or large, an image, or an altar, or a book, or a gem, or even glass in a window, from the wall of the church out, which was not carried off. Lamentable was this deed, the plundering of the city of Kieran, the holy patron’ (Annala Rioghachta Eireann: Annals of the kingdom of Ireland by the Tour Masters, from the earliest period to the year 1616, ed. and trans. John O’Donovan, 7 vols (Dublin, 1848–51; repr. Dublin, 1856; repr. Dublin, 1990), V, p. 1523).
49 For a case study of the fortunes of parish churches in Co. Meath during this period, see O’Neill, Michael, ‘The Medieval Parish Churches in County Meath’, Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, 132 (2002), pp. 1–56 (pp. 45–49).Google Scholar
50 For example, Boate records that limestone ‘not newley come out of the Quarrie, but taken off old buildings’ was the preferred material for lime slaking ( Boate, Gerard, Ireland’s Natural History (London, 1657), p. 157).Google Scholar
51 For Dysert O’Dea church, see Harbison, Peter, ‘Dysert O’Dea’, in ‘The Limerick Area: Proceedings of the Royal Archaeological Institute’, Archaeological Journal, 153 (1996), pp. 335–38 Google Scholar; Henry, Françoise, Irish Art in the Romanesque Period 1020–1170 A.D. (London 1970), pp. 130–32, 162–65 Google Scholar; Leask, Harold G., Irish Churches and Monastic Buildings, 3 vols (Dundalk 1955), 1, p. 151 Google Scholar; Murchadha, Sean Ó, ‘Diseart Tola and its Environs’, The Other Clare, 16 (1992), pp. 53–57; and 17 (1993), pp. 36–42 Google Scholar; Westropp, T. J., ‘The Churches with Round Towers in Northern Clare’, journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, 24 (1894), pp. 25–34, 150–59, 332–40 (pp. 150–59).Google Scholar
52 Calendar of Documents Relating to Ireland; 1302–1310, ed. H.S. Sweetman (London, 1886), p. 300.
53 Murphy, M. A. (ed.), ‘The Royal Visitation of 1615: Diocese of Killaloe’, Archivium Hibernicum, 14 (1914), pp. 210–26 (p. 216).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
54 Harbison, Peter, ‘The Boy with the Squirrel: Henry Pelham, 1749–1806’, Ireland of the Welcomes, 48:3 (May-June 1999), pp. 18–25 (pp. 22–23)Google Scholar; Grose, The Antiquities of Ireland, II, pl. 125.
55 For the cross, see Cronin, Rhoda, ‘Late High Crosses in Munster: Tradition and Novelty in Twelfth-Century Irish Art’, in Early Medieval Munster. Archaeology, History and Society, ed. Monk, Michael and Sheehan, John (Cork, 1998), pp. 138–46 Google Scholar; Harbison, Peter, ‘Iconography on the Dysert and Kilfenora Crosses: A Romanesque Renaissance’, The Other Clare, 5 (April 1981), pp. 16–19 Google Scholar; Harbison, Peter, The High Crosses of Ireland, 3 vols (Bonn, 1992), III, pp. 83–86.Google Scholar
56 Harbison, Peter, ‘Dysert O’Dea’, in ‘The Limerick Area: Proceedings of the Royal Archaeological Institute’, Archaeological Journal, 153 (1996), pp. 336–37 Google Scholar; Peter Harbison, The High Crosses of Ireland, I, pp. 83–84.
57 An account over the legal wrangling associated with the castle and its lands is contained in a manuscript entitled ‘An account of all of the lands and other profits belonging to the Bishop of Killaloe collected by me [Bishop Worth of Killaloe], 1661, so far as I could get information’, published in O’Dwyer, Philip, The History of the Diocese of Killaloe from the Reformation to the Close of the Eighteenth Century (Dublin, 1878), pp. 333–34.Google Scholar
58 The original account was contained within the ‘1641 Depositions’ (TCD MS 829), witness testimonies of the Rebellion by Protestant settlers. Twenbrook’s account is published in O’Dwyer, History of Killaloe, p. 222.
59 O’Dwyer, History of the Diocese of Killaloe, p. 425.
60 O’Donovan, John and Curry, Eugene, The Antiquities of Co. Clare; Letters Containing Information Relative to the Antiquities of Co. Clare Collected during the Progress of the Ordnance Survey in 1839., ed. Comber, Michael (Clare, 1997), p. 46.Google Scholar
61 ‘Extracts from the Journal of Thomas Dineley, Esquire, giving some account of his visit to Ireland in the Reign of Charles II (Concluded)’, Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, ed. Evelyn Philip Shirley (with notes by the Hon. Robert O’Brien, and the Revd James Graves) (1867), 7, pp. 176–204 (pp. 180–81). Tait has also demonstrated that burial with one’s ancestors, or in a place that would in time become a mausoleum for one’s descendants, remained a central concern into the seventeenth century; Tait, Clodagh, Death Burial and Commemoration in Ireland 1550–1650 (Basingstoke, 2002), p. 66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
62 Meigs, Samantha, Reformations in Ireland: Tradition and Confessionalism, 1400–1690 (Dublin, 1997), p. 13.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
63 Annals of the Four Masters, ed. O’Donovan, VI, p. 1883.
64 A further example of such a practice is the church at Kilcredan in Co. Cork, where Sir Robert Tynte took advantage of the ruined state of the church to provide himself with a tomb to the south of the altar, and also rebuilt the church to provide fitting surroundings for his burial. Tait, Death and Burial, p. 71; Lee, RG., ‘The Ruined Monuments of Sir Robert Tynte and Sir Edward Harris in Kilcredan Church Ballycrenane, near Ladysbridge’, Journal of the Cork Historical and Archaeological Society, 31 (1926), p. 86.Google Scholar
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66 The abandonment of the church for Anglican worship is hardly surprising given the c. 1660 poll tax returns for the parish, which record a population of 814 taxpayers of whom only ten are recorded as English, A Census of Ireland circa 1659 with Supplementary Material from the Poll Money Ordinances 1660–1661, ed. S. Pender (Dublin, 1939), pp. 176–77. Although ethnicity as recorded in the returns cannot directly equate ‘English/ Scots’ with ‘Protestant’ and ‘Irish’ with ‘Catholic’, it nonetheless provides a strong indication of religious allegiances ( Smyth, William J., ‘Society and Settlement in Seventeenth Century Ireland: the Evidence of the “1659 Census” in Common Ground: Essays on the Historical Geography of Ireland presented to T. Jones Hughes, ed. Smyth, William J. and Whelan, Kevin (Cork, 1988), pp. 55–83 (p. 73)Google Scholar).
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68 For this church, now known as Temple Dowling, see Westropp, Thomas J., ‘A Description of the Ancient Buildings and Crosses at Clonmacnoise, King’s County’, Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, 37 (1907), pp. 275–306 (pp. 286–87)Google Scholar; Manning, Conleth, ‘The Adaptation of Early Masonry Churches in Ireland for Use in Later Medieval Times’, in The Modern Traveller to our Past: Festschrift in Honour of Ann Hamlin, ed. Meek, Marion (Belfast, 2006), pp. 243–48 (p. 245)Google Scholar. For descriptions of Clonmacnoise in the seventeenth century, see O’Donovan, John, ‘The Registry of Clonmacnoise; with Notes and Introductory Remarks’, Journal of the Kilkenny and South-east Ireland Archaeological Society, 4 (1856), pp. 444–60.Google Scholar
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70 Harbison, High Crosses of Ireland, I, p. 107.
71 King, Heather, ‘Irish Wayside and Churchyard Crosses 1600–1700’, Post-Medieval Archaeology, 19 (1985), pp. 13–33 (p. 28).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
72 Quoted from Richardson, John, The Great Folly, Superstition, and Idolatry, of Pilgrimages in Ireland; Especially of that to St. Patrick’s Purgatory (Dublin, 1727), preface.Google Scholar
73 The eighteenth-century belief that high crosses had been made in Rome was not limited to the Arboe example. Thomas Wright suggested that the cross of ‘St Boyn’ [Muiredach’s cross at Monasterboice in Co. Louth] had been ‘sent from Rome, and erected by order of the Pope’ ( Wright, Thomas, Louthiana: or, an Introduction to the Antiquities of Ireland. In Upwards of Ninety Views and Plans, 3 vols (London, 1748), III, p. 17 Google Scholar).
74 Richardson, Folly, Superstition, and Idolatry, p. 66.
75 T. J. Westropp, ‘Churches with Round Towers’, p. 158. O’Dwyer says that it was the more modern head of Christ that was used ‘by old women who held it in their jaw as a cure for toothache’; O’Dwyer, History of Killaloe, pp. 469–67.
76 Corish, P. J., The Catholic Community in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (Dublin, 1981), pp. 50–51.Google Scholar
77 D’Alton, John, History of Co. Dublin (Dublin, 1838), pp. 222–25 Google Scholar. The well at St Doulagh’s is mentioned by Barnaby Rich in his ‘Description of Ireland’ of 1610. It is singled out as the only ‘curiosity’ in the neighbourhood of Dublin by M. de la Boullaye le Gouz in 1644, and is also mentioned by Grose in his Antiquities of Ireland in 1790 (The Tour of the French Traveller M. de la Boullaye le Gouz in Ireland, 1644, ed. Thomas F. Croften Croker (London, 1837), pp. 5, 82).
78 Grose, Daniel, The Antiquities of Ireland; a supplement to Francis Grose [1791], ed. Stalley, Roger (Dublin, 1991), pp. 187–90.Google Scholar
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81 For an account of the occurrence of these across the country, see Tour of M. de la Boullaye le Gouz, ed. Croften Croker, appendix XIV, pp. 102–05.
82 Richardson, Folly, Superstition, and Idolatry, pp. 67–70.
83 Moss, ‘Twelfth-Century Renaissance’, pp. 135–39.
84 The most comprehensive study of the well at Clontubrid can be found in William Carrigan, History and Antiquities of the Diocese of Ossory, 4 vols (Dublin, 1904), II, pp. 327–30.
85 The construction of the well-house is attributed to Hugh Byrne, a private soldier in the Donegal militia who settled at Ardmore after the 1798 Rebellion; however, given the long tradition of pilgrimage there, it is more probable that he was responsible for its repair than its creation. See Cadhla, Stiofán Ó, The Holy Well Tradition; the Pattern of St Declan, Ardmore, Co. Waterford, 1800–2000 (Dublin, 2002), pp. 18–19.Google Scholar
86 Conleth Manning has suggested that the preservation of doorways and sections of wall in churches when they were altered during the later medieval period may have been for the same reasons. Manning, ‘The Adaptation of Early Masonry Churches’, p. 247.
87 Richardson, Folly, Superstition, and Idolatry, pp. 5–7. The carving is described as depicting Caornach ‘as a wolf, the most pernicious animal in Ireland, with a serpent’s tail thrown over its back’.
88 Corish, R J., The Catholic Community in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (Dublin, 1981), p. 37.Google Scholar
89 See, for example, Harbison, Peter, Pilgrimage in Ireland (London, 1991), pp. 119–21 Google Scholar, who suggests further that the narrow east window was used by pilgrims to view the saint’s relics and perhaps to allow them to create brandae [secondary relics made from pieces of cloth that had touched the sacred remains]. For Irish reliquary chapels, see Carragáin, Tomás Ó, ‘The Architectural Setting of the Cult of Relics in Early Medieval Ireland’, Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, 133 (2003), pp. 130–76.Google Scholar
90 The two drawings are RIA 12.T.15 (115) and RIA MS 3.C.30, p. 94. These have both been published and are discussed by Peter Harbison, ‘Glendalough Drawings of 1779 in the Royal Irish Academy Library’, in Above and Beyond; Essays in Memory of Leo Swan, ed. Tom Condit and Christiaan Corlett (Bray, 2005), pp. 445–60 (pp.452–55.
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93 Reports, Commissioners of Public Works, Annual Report, 24 (Dublin, 1875–76), p. 171.
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95 A double splay, one on the exterior and one on the interior is known in some Anglo-Saxon churches with particularly thick walls, but it is a feature not found, to my knowledge, in Ireland.
96 The style of carving and unusual stone from which the feature is carved link it to pieces of a large cornice now preserved in the stone store on site. The only surviving building large enough to accommodate these features would seem to be the cathedral, although short of them having incorporated in the eastern wall of the building prior to the late twelfth-century chancel, it is difficult to see what position they might have occupied here.
97 For example, Glendalough is included in the list of pilgrimage sites to be visited by Heneas McNichaill as penance for strangling his son, recorded in the Dowdall Register in 1541. ‘A Calendar of the Register of George Dowdall, Commonly called the “Liber Niger” or “Black Book”’, journal of the County Louth Archaeological and Historical Society, ed. L. P. Murray, vol. VI, ser. 3 (1927), p. 152.
98 Burke, W. P., The Irish Priests in the Penal Times (1660–1760) from the State Papers in HM Record Offices Dublin and London, The Bodleian Library and the British Museum (Waterford, 1914), p. 310.Google Scholar
99 O’Flaherty, Roderic, A Choreographical Description of West or h-Iar Connaught, Written AD 1684, ed. Hardiman, James (Dublin, 1846), p. 89.Google Scholar
100 Ó Cadhla, The Holy Well Tradition, p. 24.
101 Ellis, Jason and Moss, Rachel, ‘The Conservation of the Romanesque Portal at Killaloe: Exposing the History of one of Clare’s Finest Carved Doorways’, Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, 129 (1999), pp. 67–89.Google Scholar
102 For the continuity of building in the Gothic style in Ireland, see Stalley, ‘Gothic Survival’.
