ECCLESIASTICAL SITESThe earliest biographers of St. Patrick, writing in the
late seventh century, refer to churches built of clay. The
Life of St. Brigitby Cogitosus, also late seventh century,
described a large timber church at Kildare with a screen
down the center dividing male from female and another
cutting off the east end where the shrines of Brigit and
Conláed were displayed. The earliest Irish word used
for a church in the annals, and that only from 762, is
dairthech (oak house), and this seems to have signified
a timber-framed oak church. The earliest reference to a
stone church was at Armagh in 789, where the unique
term used for itoratorium lapideumis indicative of
the novelty of the structure at the time. This church,
built at a time when Armagh was successfully promul-
gating the cult of St. Patrick and his preeminence as the
converter of the Irish, may have been the first large
mortared-stone building in the country, setting a trend
that was only gradually followed by other important
ecclesiastical sites such as Clonmacnoise, where the
damliac(now the cathedral) was built in 909.
The building of stone churches became more fre-
quent at major sites during the tenth century and became
virtually the norm by the eleventh. Most of the earliest
surviving churches, especially those of tenth-century
date, have a feature known as antae, where the side walls
are continued for a short distance beyond the end or
gable walls. These features appear to be uniquely Irish
and served to support the barge boards or end rafters of
the roof, which was carried over the gables. Antae
appear to have been replaced during the eleventh cen-
tury by east- and west-projecting corbels at the corners,
which served the same purpose of carrying the roof over
the gables and supporting the end rafters.
Early masonry churches were invariably plain rect-
angular structures with a west doorway, usually lin-
teled, and normally two windows, one in the center of
the east wall and one in the south wall. The gables
were steeply pitched and, in some cases, the masonry
was characterized by the use of large thin stones placed
on edge. The largest surviving example, and coinci-
dentally the earliest exactly dated one, is Clonmacnoise
Cathedral, which originally measured 18.8 by 10.7
meters internally. Some very small examples, such as
Temple Ciarán at Clonmacnoise and St. Declan’s
Oratory at Ardmore, appear to have served as shrines
over the grave of the founding saint.
Small dry-stone rectangular churches with corbeled
roofs like the best-preserved example at Gallarus,
County Kerry, are a local style of building largely con-
fined to west Kerry. They probably date from about the
ninth to tenth century and certainly do not go back to
the beginnings of the early medieval period. Examples
excavated at Church Island (Valentia) and Reask, County
Kerry, have been shown to be late in the sequence of
activity on the site, and the post holes of a wooden church
were found beneath the Church Island building. Like-
wise, post holes for earlier wooden churches have been
found beneath stone churches at Ardagh, County Long-
ford, and at Carnsore, County Wexford.
Apart from the carving of a cross over the doorway
or on the underside of the lintel in a handful of cases,
these early masonry churches do not have any surviving
decoration. This changed in the twelfth century with the
arrival of Romanesque architecture, when the arches and
sides of doorways, chancel arches, and sometimes win-
dows were lavishly decorated with carvings. Around the
same time the fashion of building the chancel as a sep-
arately roofed smaller unit attached to the nave and of
building stone roofs on small churches developed. A
feature of Hiberno-Romanesque architecture is that in
most cases the only change to the form of the building
was the addition of a chancel, decorated chancel arch,
and decorated doorway. Very few examples have any
further elaboration, and Cormac’s Chapel at Cashel is
unique with its elaborate blind arcading internally and
externally combined with vaulted ceilings, stone roofs,
corbel tables, attached square towers, and tympana on
its doorways. It is at the same time the finest and the
most atypical Romanesque church in Ireland.Round Towers
Free-standing bell towers of circular plan, known as
round towers, are a feature of the more important eccle-
siastical sites and were built between the tenth and
twelfth centuries. Known as a cloigtheach(bell house)
in Irish, these remarkable structures can be up to 33
meters in height, with a doorway placed well above
ground level in most cases. Offsets or corbels in the
inner face of the wall indicate the former locations of
wooden floors, which must have been connected by
ladders. There were usually four floors between the
entrance floor and the belfry level, and these had each
a window facing in a different direction. The belfry level
itself had a number of windows, usually four. It was
thought in the past that handbells would have been rung
from the top floor, but Stalley has recently suggested
that more conventional bells may have been hung at
the top floor and been operated by long ropes. The
roof was a cone of mortared stone, although many
surviving examples have later roofs or are severely
truncated, being particularly susceptible to lightning
strike. The earliest reference in the annals to a cloi-
gtheachis to one at Slane, County Meath, when it
was burned by the Hiberno-Norse of Dublin in 950.
This tower does not survive. The only example with a
building date from the annals is that at Clonmacnoise,
which was completed in 1224. The latest examples
such as Timahoe (County Laois), Ardmore (County Water-
ford),and Devinish (County Fermanagh) have original