At the beginning of the seventeenth century the method of manufacturing glass in northern Europe had not changed since the Middle Ages. However, by the end of the century the advances in the glass industry had made the earlier technology obsolete. The main evidence for the manufacture of glass in this period comes from medieval documentary sources because the survival rate of glass-furnaces is very poor. In England there is no surviving upstanding forest glass wood-fired furnace of the sixteenth-seventeenth-century period, and several which have been excavated only survived to a few courses high. The discovery of an extant furnace with barrel-vaulted roof in situ in the town land of Glasshouse near the village of Shinrone in County Offaly offers the archaeologist a rare opportunity to examine the technology of an often-forgotten glass industry.

Two locational factors were necessary for establishing a glass-furnace: firstly, close proximity to woodlands where there was an abundant supply of fuel and ash from the burning process; secondly, a convenient source of sand, e.g. an esker ridge. The furnaces themselves were simple rubble-stone structures consisting of a barrel-vaulted firing chamber with a central fire-trench. The fire was fed from either one or both sides of the chamber via a stoking tunnel. The crucibles were placed in pairs on top of the sieges, which were located on either side of the fire-trench. Work holes (glory holes) were built into the side of the vault to allow the glass-makers to remove impurities which rise to the surface of the molten glass and also to check when the glass was ready for working. An iron pole was inserted into the crucible via the work hole, if the molten glass was ready a thread of glass would hang from the rod.

The resulting glass was green because of potassium oxide specifically found in wood, and was known as forest glass. Dry wood, producing little smoke, was essential as there no chimney to allow smoke to escape in the furnace. Moreover, it has the additional benefit of reaching higher temperatures. The furnace itself was enclosed by a wooden building or glasshouse, some examples of which were known to have been roofed with wooden shingles or slate. The post-holes or ditches of these buildings have been identified in excavations of forest furnaces in England.

Until the mid-sixteenth century the glass industry in England and Ireland was virtually non-existent, glass being imported from France. As an example of how precious glass was at that time, it is recommended that "when Duke of Northumberland left Alnwick castle the steward was accustomed to take out the glazed windows and stow them away safely until the Duke's return". In 1567 a Huguenot, Jean Carre, obtained a permit from Queen Elizabeth I to establish a forest glass industry in the Sussex/Surrey region. The workforce was recruited from experienced glass-making families centered in the Lorraine region. Among those recruited were the Hennezells (Henseys) and the de Bigaults/Bigots (Bigos).

In 1586 Queen Elizabeth I granted Captain Woodhouse suit for a privilege to make glass in Ireland. His assistance to George Longe and Ralph Pillying in erecting and maintaining two houses for glass making'. This was followed by the granting of a monopoly in 1589. In October 1589, a petition from George Longe to Lord Burghley stated that 'he has spent his time wholly in the trade and has found stuffe meet and brought to perfection the making of glass in Ireland'. Longe had bought the patent for glass-making from Captain Woodhouse in that same year. There are also references to land being granted to Philip de Bigo in County Offaly during the Elizabethan period.

By the early seventeenth century English manufacturers had developed coal-fired furnaces based in towns which were beginning to replace the wood-fired furnaces. An Englishman, Admiral Sir Robert Mansell, held the monopoly on this new technology. Furthermore, owing to the enormous depletion of woodland a royal proclamation in 1615 banned the use of wood fuel in glasshouses in England. The increased competition of Mansell, who also ensured the strict enforcement of the 1615 ban, pushed the French families out of the glass-making industry. In order to ply their trade, some of these French families moved to other countries which were not prohibited from using wood, Ireland included.

In 1619 Mansell issued an arrest for Sir William Clavell and Abraham Bigo. This may have been as a result of Clavell and Bigo's joint venture to establish a glasshouse at Church Knowle in Dorset in 1618. Four years later, in 1623, Abraham Bigo appears in Birr, Co. Offaly, having leased land from Lawrence Parsons to construct a glasshouse in the townland of Clonbrone, near Birr. Under the conditions of this lease Bigo could not 'set up any glass house or glasswork on any other land, or buy wood of any other for his glasswork but only of me'. In the reign of Charles II (1660-85) a namesake and descendant of the earlier Philip Bigo was granted land in Ballyneshragh, Carrowmore, Feddane and Newtown in Lusmagh, Co. Offaly, and according to local tradition he established some glasshouses in these areas.

In 1638/9 the exportation and manufacture of glass in Ireland was prohibited, and in 1641 another bill prohibited the felling of trees as a fuel supply for glass-furnaces. As happened in England twenty years earlier, the combined effects of the legislation and technological advances heralded the end of the forest glass wood-fired furnaces.

The Henseys are mentioned in Ireland in the seventeenth century in Garrycastle and Banagher in the parish of Lusmagh; Kilorney, Ballyengowne, Galrus, Ballyshane in Rynagh parish; Bollinure, Ballinkellin in Shinrone parish and Clonlisk, Ballintoren, Adrowle, Kellogs in the parish of Kilcommon, Co. Offaly. On the current edition of Ordnance Survey map the latter three townlands surround the Glasshouse site, which suggests that the furnace was associated with the Hensey family. In 1670 one Ananias Hensey set up a glasshouse near the new town of Portarlington, which was founded in 1666. The Calendar of State Papers for November 1670 states that Hensey was 'failing in his art of making glass' despite the fact that he had 'practiced it in another place these twenty years past'. Perhaps Hensey was trying by trial and error to make the transition from the old wood-fired furnace to the more efficient new technology of the coal-fired furnace. The site of this glasshouse may have been located at the 'Glasshouse' marked on the Ordnance Survey map west of the town.

In England the majority of glasshouse sites have been identified by the field-name Glasshouse, and of those identified only the lower portions of the furnaces survive. Two townlands in County Offaly are called Glasshouse. The earliest reference to the townland name of Glasshouse at Shinrone was made in 1717, which suggests that the townland received its name in the seventeenth century. Townland, close to the village of Shinrone, was found, after field inspection, to contain the upstanding remains of a seventeenth-century glass furnace. This is a typical barrel-vaulted crude sandstone structure with a central fire-trench and opposing stoking tunnels. The entire internal surface of the vaulted furnace is covered in a layer of blue/green glass. There are two work holes on one side wall at the springing level of the arch, and evidence of two destroyed holes on the opposite wall. The siege platforms are in place but the end walls do not survive.

The plan and section of this furnace correspond well with a mid-sixteenth-century forest glass-furnace at Blunden's Wood, Surrey, England (see section), and a seventeenth-century example at Jamestown, Virgina, America, dated to 1608. A large fragment of another glass-furnace with similar glass-covered surface was recovered from a field wall, along with fragments of glass, in the townland of Glaster, near Lusmagh. This site is associated with Philip Bigo in the 1659 census. The furnace at Glasshouse, Shinrone, is likely to fall within the date range 1590 - 1640, based on parallels with the above-mentioned furnaces. After the 1640s the wood-fired -furnaces were replaced by the technologically advanced, town-based, coal-fired furnaces. From the Elizabethan period up to the 1659 census both the Bigo and Hensey families were known to be living and plying their trade throughout County Offaly.

Acknowledgements:
We would like to express our thanks to the following people who generously gave their time and assistance in the preparation of this article: Mary Boydell, Annette Camier, Hon. Sec. of the Huguenot Society of Ireland, David Crossley, Sheffield University and Noel McMahon, Shinrone.

Archaeology- A Window On The Hidden Past

Before the arrival of Christianity, we have no history or written record of our past and it is to archaeology, mainly, that we must look for answers about a time known to scientists as the prehistoric period. New discoveries can lead to reappraisals of the past and it is for this reason that we must treasure our archaeological monuments as they represent a finite and non-renewable resource.

Our knowledge about the past is mainly based on information from our monuments, either through excavation or survey. Such work and discoveries can often lead to new ideas and very often change our perspective on the past. The archaeological world, for academic purposes, has divided our past into periods of time each of which posses a characteristic range of artefacts and field monuments left behind by a community. These periods are: The Mesolithic or Middle Stone Age (7,000 to 4,000 BC); The Neolithic or New Stone Age (4,000 to 2,400 BC); Copper Age (2,400 to 2,200 BC); Bronze Age (2,200 BC to 600 BC); Iron Age (600 BC to 400 AD); During each period, humans have continuously evolved and as they progressed, new technologies and breakthroughs resulted in the creation of new artifacts and monuments which in their own way stand as a

However, a lot of archaeology is hidden beneath the surface of the ground and will only come to light during land building, land drainage etc. Very often discoveries made during these developments lead archaeologists to a whole new understanding on the origins and lifestyle of a community in a specific region. One such event occurred near Kilcormac in the 1970s

The Early Stone Age In Offaly- Hunter-Gatherer Society

The story of the Mesolithic site at Lough Boora is a fine example of how new discoveries can result in a radical rewriting of history. In the late 1970s, archaeologists working in Boora bog, near Kilcormac uncovered evidence of a lakeshore settlement dating from the Mesolithic period (7,000 BC) Before this discovery, the earliest evidence of humans in Ireland came from a Mesolithic site at Mount Sandel in Co. Down. Because of its coastal location, archaeologists initially speculated that early humans came from Europe and settled along the coastline as the interior of the country was impenetrable due to the dense forests. The Lough Boora site changed all that. Dated between 7,000 BC and 6,500 BC, the finds at the site proved instead that people had frequented this part of the country for up to 9,000 years.

The site, in the townland of Broughal, appears to have been located on a lakeshore, formerly sealed by peat and subsequently inundated by the modern lake. These early people lived in small circular huts constructed from saplings inserted into the ground and bent over to form a dome-shaped timber structure.

The structure was then covered with hides and other materials with a hearth or fireplace in the centre. The majority of their tools were made from a local black stone known as chert, which, like flint, is durable and produces a sharp edge. Dr Michael Ryan, who excavated the site in Lough Boora, told a Bord Na Mona conference a number of years ago: "All the hearths consisted of were patches of noticeably darker soil, rich in charcoal with little flakes of burnt bone, predominantly of immature pig but also of some wildfowl and of eels. Mixed in with that were very tiny, beautifully worked tools of a black stone, chert.

"We passed all this material, about 2,000 square metres of it through sieves as well as excavating it carefully by hand and we recovered about 1,500 artefacts of which about 200 were so called microliths."

Excavations carried out by the National Museum uncovered evidence of the diet of these early people. They ate wild pig, wood pigeon, brown trout, eel and hazelnuts.

The evidence suggest in this period, small communities lived in hunter-gatherer type societies, gathering what they could from their environment. Here our ancient ancestors caught salmon and eels in the nearby lakes and hunted pigs in the surrounding forests which at that stage covered much of the countryside. Archaeologists have no evidence yet of how Mesolithic man buried their dead and there are still a range of other questions about how they lived which have yet to be answered.

Future archaeological discoveries like Lough Boora may answer these unresolved queries. It may even be the case that the key to unlocking these mysteries remains buried deep in Offaly's bog. Maybe, too, some day, we will find earlier evidence of human settlement in the county. Whatever the case, what is certain is the significance of Lough Boora. Speaking at a Lough Boora Parklands Summer season of events two years ago, Dr John Feehan claimed that the Mesolithic site was of European significance.

"It is one of the key sites in the story of the colonisation and development of North Western Europe," he remarked.
"It's the only hugely significant Mesolithic site in this part of the island that you can see. It's the beginning of the story. This is Chapter One. This is when the book opens not just on the history of the Midlands but on Irish history."

The New Stone Age - The Spread Of Tombs

Around 4,000 BC, Irish society evolved from hunter-gatherer activity to farming. This involved the introduction of domesticated animals and crops and is known as the Neolithic period or the new stone age.
This era witnessed the appearance of a whole range of new monuments on the landscape, the best known of which are the famous megalithic tombs of Newgrange in Co. Meath.

Burial monuments of various shapes and sizes constructed from large stones (megaliths) were covered by a mound of earth or stone. Four types of megalithic tombs have been identified by archaeologists to date, court tombs, portal tombs, passage tombs, wedge tombs. These are categorised on the basis of the ground plan and form of the tomb.

There is little evidence for any of these tombs in Offaly or indeed of Neolithic sites in the county. However, it has been suggested that the mound on Croghan Hill and the large burial mound at Forelacka in the Slieve Bloom mountains may conceal megalithic tombs.

Court Tombs: These are possibly the earliest example of the megalithic tomb in Ireland and consist of two, three or four chambers with an open roofless courtyard, usually located at the east end of the tomb and covered by a mound of earth or stone. The majority of these are in the northern half of the country although there is a fine example at Shanballyedmond, Rearcross, Co. Tipperary.

Portal Tombs: Usually referred to as dolmens, these are the most distinctive type of tombs. They consist of two large upright side stones and a back stone which supports a huge often impressive, capstone sloping from back to front. The dolmen from Poulnabrone, Co. Clare is probably one of Ireland's best known monuments from its association with Guinness advertisement.
Passage Tombs: Consisting of a chamber, or chambers, they are usually accessed from a narrow passage contained within a large mound of earth or stone, with a retaining wall around the base of the mound often decorated with spiral patterns.
The Boyne Valley in Meath contains the most impressive collection of passage tombs in Ireland.
Wedge Tombs: Classified according to the distinctive wedge-shape of the usually large burial chamber, there is often a smaller chamber preceding the main chamber and the whole monument is usually covered by a large earthen or stone mound.

These tombs often appear in the landscape without their covering mound which has been worn away by nature over several millennia.

There are two possible megalithic tombs in Offaly located in the Slieve Bloom mountains but because of their poor state of preservation it is impossible to classify them precisely. They are located at Ballywilliam in the barony of Ballybritt and Gorraun in Clonlisk barony.

Large burial mounds, which are found throughout Offaly, may contain examples of some of the burial tombs described above, or even a new type of tomb, yet to be identified.
It has been speculated that the mound on Croghan Hill (see picture below) may date to the Neolithic period and may be an example of a burial mound covering a tomb.

The mound on Croghan Hill, on right of picture, may date to the Neolithic period and may be an example of a burial mound covering a tomb

Similarly, the large burial mound at Forelacka (see picture) in the Slieve Bloom mountains could be the site of a passage tomb. It size and the presence of kerbing around the base have heightened such speculation.

The large burial mound at Forelacka in the Slieve Bloom mountains could be the site of a passage tomb. It's size and the presence of kerbing around the base have heightened such speculation.

Other monuments belonging to this period include the field and wall systems found underneath blanket bogs. Such a discovery has been made at the Céide fields in Co. Mayo in recent years and it is possible that such early field systems also await discovery under the blanket bogs of the Slieve Blooms.

House sites have also been discovered from this period, usually during excavation.
Recent infrastructural development work such as road building, has led recently, to the discovery of new Neolithic sites, though to date, none have been discovered in Offaly.

Monuments and The Law

All archaeological monuments listed in the Record of Monuments and Places which is compiled by Duchas, the Heritage Service are protected by law under Section 12 of the National Monuments (Amendment) Act.
A copy of the Record of Monuments and Places can be found in your county library.
The act stipulates that:

• No work can be carried out on or near a site listed in the record
  without two months written notice to Duchas.
  Conviction for such an offence can result in a maximum penalty of a €1,200 fine and/or twelve months imprisonment in the District Court and a maximum penalty of €63,500 and/or five years imprisonment on conviction in the Circuit Court.
• No metal detectors are allowed at or near a monument listed in the
  record.
  Conviction for such an offence can result in a maximum penalty of a €1,200 fine and/or six months imprisonment in the District Court and a maximum penalty of €63,500 and/or twelve months imprisonment on conviction in the Circuit Court.

Offaly Heritage Forum- Protecting The Past For The Future

THE Offaly Heritage Forum was set up in 2001 to produce and implement a heritage plan for the county. It is a cross-agency group facilitated by Offaly County Council. While many groups are represented on the forum, public consultation during the planning process meant that the views of many other groups were included. The members of the forum are; Cllr Eamon Dooley, Chairman, Planning and Economic Development Strategic Policy Committee, Offaly County Council; Tom Roche, member of Community Forum, Offaly County Development Board; Kevin O'Dwyer, member of Arts and Culture Group, Offaly County Development Board; Vincent Hussey/ Debbie Grey, Forward Planning, Offaly County Council; William Wall, County Engineer, Offaly County Council; Catherine Casey, Birdwatch Ireland; Perpetua McDonagh, Offaly LEADER; Steve McNeill, Offaly Historical & Archaeological Society; Christine Byrne, Slieve Bloom Rural Development; Sharon Parr, Lough Boora Parklands; Edward Delahunt, IFA; Tom Egan, Bord Na Mona Energy Ltd; John Prior, Coillte; William Dooley, Teagasc; Val Swan, Duchas, National Parks and Wildlife; Caimin O'Brien, Duchas, Built Heritage and Amanda Pedlow, Heritage Office, Offaly and Laois County Councils.

The heritage plan was adopted by Offaly County Council in December 2001 and was one of the first to be adopted in the country. The first year of implementation of the plan has been supported by finance from the Heritage Council and Offaly County Council with many of the agencies and groups also making contributions. The main activities carried out this year included a survey of thatch in Offaly, the production of a pilot village design statement ( Kilcormac), the hosting of a seminar on care of graveyards; the production of a poster of Offaly's monuments.

The heritage forum will also host a tidy towns seminar, on Tuesday next, October 29th at 8.30 p.m. in the Tullamore Court Hotel, while a pilot Tidy Towns wildlife project in Daingean is also underway.

This series of articles is taken from the 'Tullamore Tribune', Oct - Nov 2002

Having regard to the material from which these ‘finds’ are manufactured archaeologists have divided the history of Ireland before Christ into three distinct periods. First the Stone Age. The first traces of man in Ireland can be dated to about 6000 B.C. Stone age man depended on hunting and used flint tools. The evidence for the settlement pattern of Irish Stone Age man is based on the tombs, which he had left behind - cairns, passage graves, etc.

STONE AGE

The Stone Age in Ireland is said to have lasted, until about 750 B.C. About this time bronze implements were introduced from Europe. Bronze Age man equipped with better tools took to farming. In fact he became a producer (Stone Age man had simply hunted). He also acquired a reputation for the manufacture of fine bronze tools. Harbison: says: “The widespread use of copper and bronze together with the well known Irish gold must have made Ireland one of the best known metal producers in Western Europe.

IRON AGE

The Iron Age is said to have begun about 500 B.C. The division of Irish prehistory into three distinct periods often comes in for criticism from scholars who wish to add sophisticated refinements so as to make the categories more realistic. Thus the Irish Bronze Age is divided into several periods based on the type of bronze finds. The Dowris bronze is referred to as the type of bronze associated with the latter bronze age. But perhaps we ought to go back to the beginning at this point - to Dowris in the 1820s.

T. D. Cooke, the historian of Birr, reporting the find in the Dublin Penny Journal of 1833, said that some ten years earlier Ed. Hennessy (the name is Kennedy in his History of Birr) along with another person accidentally dug up the bronze pieces in a potato patch about half way between Whigsborough House and Dough Cowra. Almost a cartload of bronze spearheads, horns, cauldrons, axe heads, etc., were taken from the place, mostly collected by the Earl of Rosse and T. D. Cooke. Cooke reported the find to the Royal Irish Academy in 1848.

Right: Crotal from the Dowras hoard

Fortunately a considerable amount of material found at Dowris is still extant and in the collections of the British Museum and the National Museum of Ireland. Archaeologists have dated the Dowris material to about 7th century B.C thus marking the first phase in the Irish Bronze Age.

Presumably this dating is based on the superior quality of the metalwork, and the finding of considerable numbers of decorative bronze pieces such as bracelets and dress fasteners.

Right: Trumpets from the Dowras hoard

OFFERING PLACE

More recently archaeologists have tried to explain the significance of such a large find on one site. Eoghan Cole advanced the theory that the objects found might represent the residue of offering-places, places where valuable materials were delivered into the waters of stream, river or lake for ritual or ceremonial purposes. Of course the lakes in Dowris have now been drained. Cole adds to this that two items of late bronze age metalwork, the horn and the crotal, might be taken to represent a ceremonial practice involving the bull. The objects representing the fertile elements of the animal, the bull’s horn and the scrotum.

Both types of bronze horn associated with the period have been found at Dowris. Cole goes on to say that Dowris must have been a central offering place because the find, almost 200 pieces, was so large.

The castle survey is essentially an inventory and as such needs extensive filling out to get a fuller picture. Local historians and specialists can now get down to this job as the foundations have been laid by the castle chapters in the Archaeological Inventory (pp 136-168).

The Inventory is the first published overview of Offaly antiquities since the edition of the Ordnance Survey letters of John O'Donovan in 1933 by Fr. O'Flanagan. O'Donovan worked in the county in 1838. The only shortcomings of the Offaly book is an understandable regret that it is not more of a full survey and less of an inventory. Presumably it will be many years before such a full survey is published. It took 25 years of reports from the time of the first Foras Forbatha survey to get to a published volume. The starting point was the sites and monuments Record (SMR) of 1988 after which a more comprehensive survey was undertaken by the OPW. This had followed on work done by Offaly County Council and Roscrea Heritage Society in South Offaly.

The Castle sites (as distinct from surviving castles or castle remains) are described in the Archaeological Inventory of County Offaly below. The material in square brackets was added by this writer. Readers with further information on Offaly's castles can send it to the Offaly Historical and Archaeological Society, Bury Quay, Tullamore. Arch. Inv. Offaly lists the following:

These castle sites, as less well known, will interest the reader. The Arch. Inv. Offaly states:

CASTLE SITES

"Evidence from both the first and current OS maps, the 17th-century Down Survey county, barony and parish maps, documentary surveys, surviving place-names and local tradition indicates that there are 60 known sites of castles in Co. Offaly. There are little or no upstanding structural remains of these castles which generally precludes more specific classifications for them. However, in some instances the evidence afforded by historical references suggests that many of them were probably late medieval tower houses or fortified houses."

AHARNEY
OS 16:3:2 (592,579) Not indicated OD 100-200 22837, 22790
Castle (site) Situated in the pasture-land SE of Aghnanagh tower house (822). Marked as an L-shaped building designated 'Castle (in ruins)' on 1840 OS ed. The field in which the castle formerly stood is locally known as the 'castle garden'. This property was held by Sir Jasper Herbert of Ballycowan in 1641. No visible remains at ground level. (Loeber Survey 1988)
16:5 (01) 29-6-93
[This castle is referred to in the Down Survey (NLI) under the parish of Durrow and Kilbride ...'the stumps of castles at Aharna, Achanairanagh and Ballykilmurry. The Herbert lands were granted to Charles Coote, earl of Mountrath, in the course of the Cromwellian plantation. See nos. 822 and 829-830.]

ANNAGHMORE (Ballybritt By.)
Castle (site) Formerly situated on a neck of land jutting into Annaghmore Lough. In 1977 a few fragments of a castle were noted here. The possible outline of a bawn wall with flanking towers was distinguished during aerial reconnaissance over the lake and its environs in recent years (pers. comm. L. Swan). No visible remains at ground level.
32:24 30-7-93

BALLINDARRA
OS 35:14:1 (239,109) 'Castle (site of )' OD 100-200 20495, 20362
Castle (site) Situated in low-lying pasture-land E of the Little Brosna River. In the possession of the O'Carrolls in 1582 and the property of Arthur Coghlan c. 1620. An inquisition of 1631 documents that Francis Ackland was in possession of 'one castle and bawn and 30 acres of arable and pasture land in the town of Ballindarraghe' at the time of his death in 1629 (Cooke 1875, 270). Thereafter it appears to have been held by the Parsons family as the 'castle and bawn of Ballindarragh' is quoted among the property of William Parsons of Birr in his will dated 1650 (Ainsworth 1948, 33). In 1642 Ballindarra was attacked and all its surrounding houses burned. A 'Plan of the Castle and town of Ye Burre as besieged by General Sarsfield in 1691' depicts Ballindarra as a large rectangular building placed centrally within an irregularly shaped bawn adjoined by the Little Brosna River on its W side (Birr Archive). The castle fell on 10 January 1848. No visible remains at ground level. (Cooke 1875, 269-72; FitzPatrick and Leonard 1992, 14-15)
25:21 10-1-94

BALLINDOWN
OS 35:2:6 (417, 490) 'Ballindown Castle (site of)' OD 200-300 20689, 20786
Castle (site) Situated in marginal land on the E edge of Woodville Wood. The castle of 'Bhaile-an-duna' was seized by Fearganainm O'Carroll and the Earl of Kildare in 1532 (AFM., vol. 5, 1411). No visible remains at ground level.
35:2 (02) 10-1-94

BALLINRATH
OS 11:16:4 (700,34) 'Castle (site of)' OD 200-300 25877, 22877
Castle (sites) Situated in good pasture-land affording extensive views of the surrounding countryside. Ballynakill church and graveyard (629) is located nearby to E. The field in which the castle formerly stood is locally known as the 'Castle Field'. No visible remains at ground level.
11:32 24-6-91

BALLINREE (Ballybritt By.)
OS 35:15:4 (489,62) 'Loretto Castle (site of)' OD 200-300 20772, 20312
Castle (site) Situated within a large, relatively modern and perfectly circular enclosure locally known as 'The Ring' or 'Carroll's Ring'. Marked on first and current OS eds. as 'Loretto Castle'. No visible remains at ground level.
35:27 10-1-94

BALLYBOUGHT
OS 9:5:5 (113,341) 'Shancourt or Meeneglish' OD 200-300 23304, 23183
Castle (site) Situated on a natural gravel ridge in undulating countryside. Reputedly the site of a de Lacy castle (ITA Survey 1942). Just the wall foundations of a rectangular building (dims. 14m N-S x 22m E-W) built on top of a rectangular earthwork survive. A causewayed entrance at S (Wth 2.5m) crosses an enclosing moat (Wth 2m; D 3m). There is slight evidence of an external bank at E only. The walls are constructed of uncoursed limestone rubble and on average measure 1.5m thick and stand 0.5m high. There are the remains of a corner tower on the NW angle of the building with evidence of both a basebatter and a garderobe chute (dims. 0.4m x 0.4m). [Some say this is where Hugh de Lacy was murdered in 1186 and not at Durrow demesne.]
9:3 (01) 20-5-93

BALLYBOY (Ballyboy By.)
OS 31:4:4 (740,470) Not indicated OD 100-200 22029, 21389
Castle (site) Situated S or the Silver River and on the E side of the main street through the village of Ballyboy. Generally regarded as an O'Molloy stronghold, it was described as 'Tirrel's chief castle' in 1599 and as late as 1641 was in the hands of William Molloy. In 1690 it was occupied by six companies of the Earl of Drogheda's regiment and then described as 'a mount high in the middle of the said village' (Loeber Survey 1988). No visible remains at ground level. (O'Flanagan 1933, vol. 1, 93)
31:15 (01) 9-8-93

BALLYBURLY
OS 4:14:5 (362,31) 'Ballyburly House (ln site of) Castle' OD 300-400 25516,23517
Castle (site) Situated on the SW slope of Ballyburly Hill with a church and graveyard (622) nearby to E. [The church is now gone.] The castle and lands of Ballyburly were leased to John Wakeley in 1551. Described in 1599 as 'Wakeley's Castle', it had apparently been razed and was at that time in need of re-edification (Loeber Survey 1988). The later 17th/18th-century Ballyburly House which was built on the site of the castle was burnt in 1888 (Bence-Jones 1978, 36-8) [It was rebuilt and burned again in the early 1920s.]
4:12 13-8-91
[The old house is illustrated in the King's County Directory of 1890.]

In ancient times, at the end of the last Ice Age, before the arrival of man, this central area contained a far greater expanse of lakeland coupled with many rivers, wooded inlets and some stretches of fenland.

From about 7,000 B.C. the earliest inhabitants of the region began to arrive in small groups of people with a simple Stone Age culture. These were the hunters and fishers of the Mesolithic period (Middle Stone Age). There is to-day an increasing body of evidence to show that these Mesolithic hunters frequented the Midland lakes. Close to the Shannon in County Offaly where one great lake (Lough ReeDerg) existed, traces have been found of an early settlement probably a hunting camp, dating from circa 6,500 B.C. and now covered by the later growth of the raised bogland. A number of sites belonging to the close of the Mesolithic period, some three thousand years later, have been discovered on the shores of Lough Derravaragh and Lough Kinale. The weapons and tools of these Mesolithic hunters were made of chert, a compact, black-coloured stone used as a substitute for flint.

About 3,000 B.C. further groups of Stone Age people arrived in Ireland bringing with them a knowledge of primitive farming both tillage and pasture. The habitation sites of these Neolithic (New Stone Age) people are difficult to locate but their burial places, called court tombs and portal tombs can be seen in the northern counties of the Midland region. The court tombs were communal burial places and there is a particularly fine example at Cohaw in County Cavan, which, on excavation, yielded the bones of three individuals and portion of a pottery vessel.

A portal tomb is often marked on the Ordnance maps as a "Cromlech", a "Druid's Altar", or indeed as "Leaba Diarmaid and Gráinne". There are some good examples in the Midland region, and the tomb at Dromanone, near Boyle in County Roscommon, with its massive roofstone and two tall portals is a very impressive monument.

The passage graves are regarded by most experts as the finest monuments of the Irish Neolithic, and the tombs at Dowth, Knoth and .Newgrange in the Boyne Valley are known the world over. Another cemetery on the Loughcrew Hills near Oldcastle close to the Westmeath-Cavan border displays the hill-top setting of these cairns with smaller satellite tombs grouped around the large central cairn. Corn (Cairn) Hill, north of Longford town contains at least two cairns, probably passage graves. Few, if any, burial monuments of the Neolithic period are to be found in the southern sector of the Midland region though the cairn on top of Croughan Hill in County Offaly could well turn out, on excavation , to be a passage grave. Clearly the wet and heavy soil of the Midlands did not appeal to the Neolithic farmers who preferred the light soils of the upland regions.

As with the Neolithic, the field monuments of the succeeding Bronze Age are mainly burial places or barrows as they are usually called. They often contain small stone-built graves called cists where the burials, (normally cremations) are contained within pottery-vessels, Urns or Food Vessels. The barrows are frequently grouped in small cemeteries as at Slanemore, about four miles west of Mullingar. Here three small bowl harrows crown the hill-top from which one can see Lough Owel and Frewin Hill where another group of barrows is located. Stone circles and standing-stones are usually associated with the Bronze Age and the latter are often found within ring-barrows. On the Hill of Uisneach five miles east of Ballymore in County Westmeath the famed Catstone, reputed to mark the centre of Ireland, is surrounded by a low circular ring-barrow. Uisneach was one of the great assembly places of pagan Celtic Ireland and is said to have been "christianized" by St. Patrick. Carnfree near Tulsk in County Roscommon, said to be the inauguration site of the Kings of Connaught has a slender standing stone within a ring-barrow. Rathcroghan (Cruachan) not too far away is regarded as the royal seat of the Kings of Connaught associated in particular with Queen Maeve of the heroic legend of the Táin. Among the extensive complex of earthworks at Cruachan are a number of ring barrows. Slanemore has also an early Celtic association in that it is held to have been the scene of the last great battle of the Táin.

In general it is accepted that the Celts, arriving here in early Iron Age times, made use of earlier sacred burial places such as Uisneach and Cruachan. There is, however, a school of thought who would see the Bronze Age people who erected the barrows and other burial mounds as the first Celts. Future excavations may help to solve the problem.

Hillforts, a field monument closely associated with the Celts on the Continent and in Britain, are also found in Ireland, though only about fifty examples are recorded and none are known from the Midland region. Another form of Iron Age monument, the linear earthworks called the Black Pig's Race, or Duncla - can be seen extending from Lough Kinale to Lough Gowna in County Longford blocking this ancient and important routeway. This earthwork can be traced running in a southwesterly direction as far as Slanemore. Another impressive linear earthwork known as the Dun of Drumsna, can be seen near Carrick-on-Shannon in County Roscommon.

Undoubtedly the commonest field monument in Ireland is the ring-fort, or, in Irish, Rath or lios and examples can be found in all the Midland counties but especially in Counties Westmeath and Roscommon. The majority are simple enclosed homesteads but the larger forts, defended by massive banks and deep ditches or fosses, probably had some form of defensive function. It could be said that almost every townland be it in drumlin, upland or undulating grassland, contains or did contain a ring-fort, and certainly any townland with the prefix Rath or Lios (and there are many) received its name from the ring-fort or forts within its boundary. Probably accounting in part for their numerical strength is the fact that they range in date from at least the early Iron Age to Medieval times. Good examples of ring-forts are to be found at sites such as Cruachan and Uisneach and at the latter site the stone foundations of the houses, of circular and square plan, but now grass-covered, can be clearly seen.

On some of the Midland lakes there are small islands close to the shore which conceal the timbers and brushwood of a crannog or artificial island - the lakeside counterpart of the ring-fort. These sites often come to light when a lake is drained and the water level lowered thus exposing the low stoney platforms or mounds with the tops of the timber stakes showing above the water. The two crannogs at Ballinderry near Moate, when excavated, yielded valuable evidence from a number of periods.

With the arrival of Christianity, and particularly the spread of the monastic movement in the sixth and seventh centuries A.D., the heavy soils of the Midlands were enclosed and tilled by the monks. Little remains on the ground to-day of some of the great monastic establishments such as Clonard, but at others the ruins of an early church, a High Cross or cross-slab and perhaps traces of the monastic enclosure or vallum - an earthen/stone bank like that of a ring-fort, but enclosing a much larger area, was usually circular in plan and marked the bounds of the monastic precinct.

Many monasteries began as the díseart or retreat of the founder saint and so the "islands" in the boglands around the Shannon or the small islands in Lough Ree were favoured by the holy men of the Early Christian Period. There are early monastic remains on Hare Island, Inchcleraun and Inchbofin - places accessible to-day to those who enjoy the pleasures of boating or cruising on the Shannon. Clonmacnoise, some seven miles south of Athlone on the banks of the Shannon, is probably the most important monastic site not alone in the Midlands, but in the entire country. Founded by St. Ciaran it certainly contains today one of the largest groups of early Christian antiquities rivalled only by Glendalough. Some traces of the great earthen vallum survive and within it are the churches, Round Towers, High Crosses and by far the largest collection of inscribed and decorated grave slabs from any one site. The High Cross, known as the Cross of the Scriptures is one of the finest of the Scripture crosses and the Nun's Church is regarded by many as the high point of the Irish Romanesque.

Other famous monasteries in the Midland region include Durrow (founded by St. Columba) in Offaly where there is a notable High Cross and some cross-slabs, and Gallen, also in Offaly, which has a large group of grave-slabs. There are early church remains at Ardagh in County Longford and at Fore in County Westmeath. At many of the early monastic sites the extant visible remains are those of the later Medieval church ruins, but a fair proportion of the sites contain architectural features and details such as doorways, chancel arches and occasionally windows belonging to the Irish Romanesque. Doorways such as Clonfert on the west of the Shannon, Killeshin in County Laois, and Moinincha in the southern tip of Offaly are among the finest and best preserved in Ireland.

Besides being rich in antiquities of the early Christian period the Midland region can also boast of a number of fine Medieval ecclesiastical remains. At Boyle in the very north of Roscommon the ruins of the Cistercian Abbey (beside the main Sligo road) display not only some structural features belonging to the twelfth century but also some very fine details of the early Gothic or Transitional style. The Canons Regular of St. Augustine like the Cistercians were introduced into Ireland by St. Malachy as part of the twelfth century reform movement. In many instances they took over the earlier Celtic establishments and the remains of Augustinian priories are to be found at sites such as Monaincha, Gallen and Seir Kieran in Offaly and Inchcleraun in Longford. Later Medieval orders -as the Dominicans and Franciscans built their friaries within towns, like Longford, Mullingar and Athlone, where no traces now survive above ground of their establishments. At Roscommon, however, there are substantial remains of the Dominican friary and a very fine fifteenth century wall-tomb depicting gallow-glasse in full military dress. At Fore, in Westmeath, the ruins of the Benedictine Abbey show how, in troubled Medieval times, a monastery was often fortified in the same way as a castle or walled town.

Precariously perched ruins of a castle at Clonmacnoise built by John Gray in the thirteenth century. Photograph, Tom Kennedy

The coming of the Normans in 1169 witnessed the erection and spread of the motte and bailey - the large defensive earthwork associated with their initial campaigns of conquest and settlement. The motte or large earthen mound was surrounded by a deep ditch or fosse and the enclosing bank and the lower bailey area, usually semi-circular in plan, was also defended by a fosse and bank. Only a small portion of the Midlands was effectively controlled by the Normans, particularly Westmeath which has some well preserved mottes as at Castletown-Geoghegan, Killixy and Mount Temple. Reputedly the highest motte in the country is at Granard in County Longford and strangely enough, a very fine motte and bailey is to be found at Clonburren in Roscommon on the west bank of the Shannon.

There are other Medieval earth-works such as moated sites and deserted manorial villages to be found mainly in Westmeath where the Norman attempts at settlement met with initial success. Early Norman castles with massive keeps and towered curtain walls are scarce in the Midlands but Athlone Castle still stands to-day, silent and grim, commanding this all important crossing of the Shannon. Other early castles survive at Roscommon (a royal castle), Ballintober, also in Roscommon, and at Dunamase in County Laois. In later times during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries both the Normans and Irish lords favoured a smaller form of castle known as the tower-house, a single strongly-built tower of rectangular plan with four or five floors. Most are now in a very ruinous condition, but a fine well-preserved example can be seen at Leap in South Offaly.

There are other monuments and sites dating from late Medieval times, but space does not permit of their inclusion in this short article. Suffice to say that the Midland region has an undoubted wealth of ancient sites and monuments and is particularly rich in antiquities of the Early Christian Period. This heritage is a national resource which, if preserved and properly presented can serve not only to illustrate our past as well if not better than any document or history book but can also play a very significant role in attracting visitors and tourists to the area. Unfortunately this heritage, of which any country or region would be proud, is now threatened with destruction as never before mainly because of the bulldozer and deep ploughing technique in modern farm development. While we still the time and power to halt such destruction let us ensure the preservation of this priceless heritage for future generations.

Books for further reading:
Killanin, The Lord, and Duignan, M.V. The Shell Guide To Ireland 2nd edition, revised (1969).
O'Riordain S.P. Antiquities of the Irish Countryside (1968).
Herity, M. and Eogan, G. Ireland in Prehistory (1977).
Harbison P. Guide to the National Monuments of Ireland 2nd edition (1973).
Harbison P. The Archaeology of Ireland (1976).
De Paor, Maire and Liam. Early Christian Ireland (1958).
Mitchell F. The Irish Landscape (1976).
Ryan M. Lough Boora Excavations An Taisce Journal, Vol 2, no. 1 (1978)

Above: recovery fo a dug-out canoe at Lough Derravaragh. Photograph, Leo Daly/Source

Cadamstown and Letter were in the tuath of Cinel Arga, one of the eight cantreds in the territory of Eile ui Chearbhaill (Ely O'Carroll); to this day the track leading up the mountain above Letter is known as the Cinel Lane. The local chieftains were the O'Flanagans, about whom we know next to nothing about. The O'Flanagans residence was at a place called Ardlich Oilill, the location of which has long been lost. The area passed out of O'Flanagans hands presumably during the plantation of Eile in the early part of the seventeenth century, and by the 1640s was in the possession of Adam Lord Viscount Loftus of Ely. The name 'Cadamstown' (Baile Mhic Adhain) dates to around this time, the 'Adam' in question presumably being the Lord Viscount himself. Letter passed through a succession of hands after this, but that is another story.

BRONZE AGE BURIALS

Early Christian foundations were often sited at or near earlier pagan religious sites, which were thus christianised, as were certain practices of the earlier religion. Thus we find Saint Finan's monastery at Kinnitty situated at the foot of Knocknaman, and his well in Forelocks itself, in the heart of an area whose history dates back at least as far as the Bronze Age, and which still retains hidden in the features of its landscape an impression of the beliefs of the earlier peoples of this part of Slieve Bloom. So too, where Lughna was selecting a site for his foundation, he picked on Letter because it has similar associations.

On the high ground above Letter people of Bronze Age times had buried their deadleaders; there are at least six burial tumuli of probably late Bronze Age in Coolcreen townland and the adjacent townlands of Spink and Magherabane.

Two of these, on Mr. John Bracken's land in Coolcreen, are in particularly fine condition; they show the characteristic saucer- like depression on top of the mound, which is due either to collapse of the cist or chamber inside, or to early interference with the sites.

RING FORT

There are several other interesting monuments in the same area - a ring-fort in Magherabane, and again in Coolcreen a most unusual enclosure banked by a circular rampart and with a depressed central lios. This may well have been a medieval booley enclosure, and in this connection it is interesting that the area above the weir on the Silver River 1 km away to the north-west was known as Aughaboolia - the booley-field or ford. On the slope at the north end of Coolcreen there is an unusual bank which runs around the hill for nearly half a kilometre, transgressing the field-boundary. Were it not for its unstategic situation it might have something to do with a hill-fort: as it is, it's not impossible that it simply has to do with hedge clearance in the last century. Still, one must consider the local tradition that the O'Flanagans had a fort up here somewhere.

Mr. E.C. R. ARMSTRONG has earned the thanks of all students of early Irish art and epigraphy by rescuing the remarkable series of slabs at Gallen Priory from the oblivion into which they had fallen, and by the very clear descriptions and illustrations which he has given of them (antea, pp. 61, 173). In studying these, a few points occurred to me which I have ventured to put together in the hope that they may be of interest.

SlabNo. 1. In type the cross on this slab resembles those of a large series of the oldest (eighth and ninth centuries) of the Clonmacnois slabs; and the style of the lettering, with a ? shaped like the minuscular Roman d, accords approximately with the same dating. I hardly think it is necessary to see anything but the first four letters of a proper name in the inscription; analogy would be altogether against any descriptive adjective, such as Petrie attempts to find.

I have said that in type this cross resembles certain of the Clonmacnois slabs; but in detail it is absolutely different. The first thing that strikes the eye is the bifurcation of the inner lines of the cross, which is altogether extraordinary, and unlike anything that I can recollect. The nearest parallel that I can call to mind is the lozenge panel surrounding the cross on the lost Orthanach slab at Clonmacnois; but this is by no means "on all fours" with the example under consideration. In Irish crosses and interlacing patterns, bifurcation of lines is very rare indeed, and every example is worth careful consideration.

A second point that this apparently simple, but really very complex and suggestive, slab presents for consideration is the large number of lines of which the cross and corner panels are composed - no fewer than eight in number in the horizontal bar. There is only one cross of the hundreds at Clonmacnois (and that one is now reduced by fracture to a small and insignificant fragment) presenting so many; and this belongs to a much later type than the cross at present before us.

Thirdly, we must notice the singular want of symmetry in the design, which Mr. Armstrong's careful drawing enables us to study in detail. Even though only half of the slab remains, there are so many obvious divergences from the exact balance that the type of pattern demands, that we must, I think, ascribe the slab to a rather unskilled workman, notwithstanding the striving after originality that his treatment of the centre of the cross indicates. Of course even the Clonmacnois sculptors are sometimes found nodding, and there are about half a dozen slabs in the cemetery there that we must pronounce a disgrace to that incomparable series if we could succeed in divesting them of the absorbing interest attaching to every relic of the past of Ireland. But I do not think there is any one of the Clonmacnois slabs displaying so many anomalies as this from Gallen Priory. No Clomnacnois sculptor would have added the little cross-bar to the base of his cross. Nor would he have prolonged the lower line of the inscribed panel to the right, so as to spoil the mitre-joint at the lower right-hand corner. There are two parallels at Clonmacnois for the unequal number of lines in the vertical and horizontal bars (here eight lines in the horizontal and, apparently, six in the vertical), but not in crosses of this type; and indeed, owing to the fracture of the slab, it is by no means easy to see how the sculptor got over the difficulties he had created for himself by this piece of perversity. Another anomaly is the mitred joint in the top limb of the cross, corresponding to a butting joint in the side and bottom limb; it makes one hope that some day the other half of the slab may come to light; for otherwise it is impossible to guess what happened to the innermost line of the circle, in the upper left-hand corner, when the design was complete. These remarks will be sufficient to show that though the design on this slab is almost of the simplest possible - a plain cross in a square panel - it really is one of very great interest.

No.2. Evidently, as Mr. Armstrong says, the shaft of a standing cross. Probably it was meant to stand against a wall, which would account for the reverse face being blank. The panels on this cross are in many respects very noteworthy. In the upper panel, the plain voided circular centre to the cross in the middle is unique. Was it suggested to the sculptor by a cruciform reliquary? In the middle panel, the opposing animals appear to me to have a distinct Scandinavian "feeling" about them, though it would require very minute examination of details - such as the shape of the eyes, and the nature and treatment of the interlaced tails - to determine with certainty the art-school to which they properly belong. The little panel in the centre of a diaper-field is also unusual in the Irish crosses, though there are examples in Wales. Some of the Iniscaltra slabs are covered with diaper in a similar way to the lower panel of this cross-stem; but in none, if I recollect aright, is the diaper founded as here on the triangular key-pattern.¹ In short, this extremely interesting stone raises almost as many questions as its neighbour.

No. 3. Here again we have a well-established Clonmacnois type. The cross with circular expansions, the terminals being rather larger than a semicircle, and with eared loops at the angles, the stem formed of seven lines, two, three, and two, and the terminals containing a key-pattern, is a common late tenth-century type at Clonmacnois. But in none of the Clonmacnois stones of this type does interlacing work occur in the central expansion; and very few of them bear inscriptions written in the elegant alphabet that shows an angle at the bottom of O, ?, and the looped letters. As Mr. Armstrong observes, the notation of the palatalized n in the dative case is not common in these early inscriptions, which adds a philological importance to the artistic interest of this slab.² The drawing is not quite large enough to allow us to be sure about the design of the central interlacement. It looks like a simple fret of four closed loops; but usually, when such patterns are studied minutely, subtle little complications make their appearance, turning the banal groundwork into a design full of ingenuity. It would be interesting to know if this be the case on the stone of Bran. May we hope that Mr. Armstrong will give us a detail drawing of the centre pattern of the cross? The slab is so remarkable in every way that one hungers for the fullest possible information about it.

No. 4. Evidently a [Celtic?] cross in a Greek fret border, like the slabs of Tuathgal and Findan at Clonmacnois. But with regard to the inscription, I confess that I do not see how Bennan could be equated to Benén. One would think more willingly of Aedh Bennan, King of West Connacht at the beginning of the seventh century, or of the King of Ir-Luachair of the same name mentioned in the Annals of Ulster, A.D. 785 (Rolls Series ed., vol.1, p. 260):³ though both of these dignitaries belong to a date too remote for the slab to belong to either. The third letter, however, seems to me more like R than N. These characters, and h, often approximate in shape to one another, and have to be carefully distinguished; and this letter does seem in the drawing to be slightly differentiated from the two n's that the name contains. Bernan would be a diminutive of Bern (the name of the father of Cern, who murdered King Flann's son in 911). The same name is found in composition in such forms as Berngal, &c.⁴

No. 5. - This cross is sui generis. There is no parallel, at Clonmacnois at least, for the prolongation of one limb only outside the circle. The inscription is tantalising: would it be possible to read mailcraib[e]? This was the name of the lord of Ui Tortan in Meath, ob. 917 A.D.

Nos. 6, 8, 9. - Pictures of standing high crosses. No. 6 is, I think, unique in showing the crosses of the thieves - no doubt, Mr. Armstrong is right in this interpretation. In Nos. 6 and 8 the wheel is recessed behind the face of the cross, as in the south cross at Clonmacnois; in No. 7 the wheel and the cross are represented as being of the same thickness, and so mitred together.

No.7. - Here again we have, as in No. 3, the combination of interlacing work with the looped circular expansions; but in this example the interlacing work completely usurps the place of the key-pattern (which according to Clonmacnois canons properly belongs to the type), and occupies the terminals as well as the central expansion. It is a pity the interlacing patterns are so hopelessly worn out.

No.10. - The base and one arm of a handsome cross with a symmetrical plait of one cord upon it. It is a simple but effective pattern: the groundwork on which it is designed is obvious. Two simple interlacements of one closed loop (resembling the loops in the outer side-panels of the Draegenuch slab) are set side by side, and are cut and cross-tied at every third of the adjacent curves.

No.11. - It is lamentable that this fine slab is in such bad condition (antea, p. 174). It has apparently lain at some time in a thoroughfare, having been submitted to the tread of feet along its central axis. The design is evidently copied from a cumhdach - probably directly copied from an actual specimen. On closer examination, this becomes all the more likely. The border surrounding the cross is interrupted at the angles in a way which would be unnatural in a stone design, but is intelligible if it were copied from a metal plate, secured by corner clips to leather work, It is curious that the fret is triangular round the three upper sides, square along the base.

The square panel, with the interlacing of a single loop, at the upper left-hand corner (which is now the only clear part of the design), is evidently a sort of continuation downwards of the label bearing the inscription. I suspect that there was a similar panel in the corresponding position of the opposite side, now completely gone.

The cross itself seems to he divided into five panels - a small square space in the centre, and a panel in each arm - each panel bearing a separate knot-pattern upon it. These knots seem to be founded on a scheme of circles, broken at intervals with cuspidal interlacements:
a common pattern, though on the Gallen slab the details cannot be made out with certainty, owing to the damaged condition of the slab. Nor is it quite clear whether the withy-bands are entirely separate from each other, or whether they are cross-tied over the divisions of the panels. The latter is the more probable, especially as the outline of the cross itself is obviously made by the withy-band, interlaced on itself at the ends of each arm. It is likely that were the slab perfect it would be found that the outline of the cross, the outlines of the contained panels, and the interlacing devices ornamenting the surface, are all produced by the windings of a single ribbon.

As for the panels in the angles of the cross, that in the upper left-hand corner is, I fear, hopeless. In the right-hand corner I seem to see, not an interlacing pattern, but three cloaked figures, resembling those in some of the scenes on the high crosses - e.g. the central panel in the east face of the stem of King Flann's cross at Clonmacnois: but the figures in the Gallen slab are, I think, standing sideways.

The lower panels are more promising. In the left-hand panel is a knot of very extraordinary design. The combination of vertical and oblique lines in the groundwork of the pattern is very peculiar, and there are various irregularities of detail that make the analysis of this knot a matter of extreme difficulty - a difficulty enhanced by the worn state of the slab. In the description of the opposite panel, I venture to think there is an accidental lapsus calami in Mr. Armstrong's paper: the panel contains, not a cross, but, what is much more unusual in such a position and on such a monument, a crucifix.

These few remarks will help to indicate the great value of the monuments which Mr. Armstrong has added to our record, and will, I hope, stimulate others to follow his example. There may yet be many such cross-slabs lying hidden in some of the remoter cemeteries and monastic sites of the country.

Notes:

1. A similar diaper is, however, found in the head of the south cross at Clonmacnois.
2. Compare, however, Draegenuch, in No. 11.
3. This reference is concealed in the Index to the Rolls Series edition, in the first place by being out of its proper alphabetical order, and, in the second, by a numerical misprint in the date.
4. I may, perhaps, record a question that has crossed my mind in spite of the care with which the inscription has been copied, namely, whether it might not be possible to read: IARNAN - the name of a man murdered in 1003 A.D., "in the doorway of the oratory of Gallen

This serenity, however, was probably only ever present in the early morning because, despite its apparent isolation, the site was positioned close to the intersection of two major route ways, the River Shannon, running north/south, and the eiscir riada, a glacial ridge aligned east-west, which was a natural pathway across Ireland from prehistoric times. When founded originally Clonmacnoise would have been effectively an island in the River Shannon bounded directly by water on the north and surrounded elsewhere by an expanse of bog that stretched for miles in all directions.

According to tradition, Ciarán, the founder of the monastery, died in or about the year 549, having lived at Clonmacnoise for no more than six months. Early documentation is slight but, by the close of the seventh century, it was one of the major midland monasteries. By 790 its fame had reached the continent and it was important enough to receive gifts from Charlemagne and Alcuin of York. It was during the tenth century, however, that Clonmacnoise attained its greatest prominence. In return for conceding burial rights (which were evidently every bit as sought after then as they are today) it received major political patronage from the Clann Cholmáin kings of the Southern Uí Néill. In 909 the high-king, Flann Sinna, financed the construction of the daimliag mór, the great stone church that still dominates the site. At the same time the Cross of the Scriptures was erected with an inscription immortalising Flann as 'king of Ireland'. The Uí Néill identification with Clonmacnoise was such that, for a time, it was effectively the capital of Ireland. During the eleventh and twelfth centuries, when the power of the Clann Cholmáin faded, the patronage of the monastery was taken up by the Ua Conchobair kings of Connacht and it was the burial place of the last high-king, Ruaidhrí Ua Conchobair. In the twelfth century its scriptorium produced several of the most important sources for early Irish history, including the Annals of Tigernach, the Chronicon Scottorum, the Annals of Clonmacnoise, Lebor na hUidhre and the collection of annals and genealogies known simply by its Bodleian shelf number as Rawlinson B.502. With the coming of the Normans, the importance of Clonmacnoise declined. After 1210 the settlement focus gradually shifted northwards up the river, Athlone became the major crossing point of the Shannon and the old church site declined.

Clonmacnoise was not alone as a great monastic centre. There were others including Armagh, Clonard, Durrow, Kells and Kildare but Clonmacnoise is unique in having a modern-day champion who has put time, energy, dedication and resources into its study. The archaeology of early Irish monasteries is little understood despite their role as formative influences in medieval Irish (and European) culture. Traditionally work has concentrated on the small remote churches off the west coast-island sites such as Skellig Mhichíl, Church Island and the recently (excellently) published Illaunloghan. For many people, particularly abroad, the typical image of an early Irish monastery remains a small eremitical church built in isolated, out of the way places. In Ireland, however, we have long known that this is but a part of the story. The monasteries of the east were large populous places with many churches. They were also the centres, not the island churches, that housed the libraries that were to be the powerhouses of the Carolingian renaissance and provided the Irish with their first starring role as forgers of European civilization.

The seventh and eight centuries were critical in the formation of the modern world. It was during this time that power was transferred from the Mediterranean to northern Europe, a power shift that lasted until 1945, when it crossed the Atlantic and passed to the United States. The Irish were key players in the ancient transformation. In the year 800 the Christian west consisted of four major powers, the Carolingian Empire, the kingdom of Asturias, Ireland, and the kingdoms of Britain. In such a small pool it was inevitable that the Irish would occasionally rise to the top even if it was not as political leaders but as scholars. A few years ago Thomas Cahill published a book on this period entitled How the Irish saved civilization. In what was perhaps its most insightful criticism David Howlett commented that the title was completely wrong, 'the book', he said, 'should have been called: How the Irish created civilization'. The generators of Irish intellectual endeavour were the monasteries and one cannot help but think that in any other country it would have been a priority to investigate a large monastery so as to understand more about how they made such a key contribution to the formation of the European identity. Alas, this has not occurred.

The problem with the excavation of a large monastic site is that it is a ten- or twenty-year undertaking. In an ideal world this should not be a problem. Even in non-ideal worlds the Wharram Percy (Yorkshire) project took twenty-five years, George Eogan's heroic work at Knowth, the best part of forty years, while the excavations on Mount Olympus, initiated in 1895 are still continuing. Three factors militate, however, against long-term research in the twenty-first century. Firstly, our modern bureaucratic age is unable to think beyond three- or five-year projects, not only in archaeology but in almost any area of endeavour except road-building. Anything that takes longer than five years is viewed suspiciously as an unreliable investment that might never be concluded. A 'twenty-year project', including the government's recently announced €34 billion plan for road building, is generally interpreted as meaning 'never'. Secondly, it is extremely difficult to find individuals who will devote themselves to a single site for ten or twenty years. Academic promotion committees can evaluate short-term projects but they are completely at sea when it comes to assessing an on-going twenty-year project. Nowadays, it is in an academic's financial interest to take on nothing that lasts more than between three and five years. Thirdly, the budget for archaeological research excavation in Ireland is ridiculously small. The Scottish government spends more money on the excavation of one site, Portmohomock (a site, incidentally, which is of central importance to the understanding of the early Irish monastery), than all of the money that is spent by our government on archaeological research in Ireland. It is not just the Scots that put us to shame. At Hamage (France-Nord) the resources of the Belgian and French governments have been invested in the excavation of a monastery that has seventh-century Irish (or at least Irish-style) levels, while in Italy the work of Richard Hodges at San Vincenzo al Volturno is also of relevance to understanding the Irish monastery. It is a sad comment on the present state of Irish archaeology that the total amount of money spent on archaeological research (apart from the Discovery Programme) would be rejected by an estate agent if it was offered as the down-payment on the purchase of an apartment in Dublin. In the poverty of our archaeological research monies, it is fortunate that we can rely on our Belgian, English, French, Italian and Scottish colleagues to inform us about the layout of early Irish monasteries. With one solitary exception-Heather King-who by her energy alone, redeems not only an apathetic Irish government but also the academic discipline of archaeology, which, in thraldom to theory and commerce, finds it impossible to initiate or maintain any long-term project.

King's excavations have concentrated in the Old Graveyard, where she has recovered the domestic settlement associated with the monastery. Also, together with her colleague Conleth Manning she has excavated the high crosses and carried out other smaller investigations across the site. The writing of excavation reports is notoriously complex, dependent on irregular funding, on the director's availability from other duties, and on the ability of specialists to produce their reports within a designated time. It is a general axiom that for every month spent recording in the field, three months need to be spent writing up. As the number and range of forensic studies increase, this can be seen to be an understatement. In the interim before the appearance of her final report, Heather King decided to initiate a series of Clonmacnoise studies in which she persuaded, cajoled and charmed the cream of Irish scholarship to apply their minds to the subject of Clonmacnoise. As a result, individuals whose thoughts might never appear in a published excavation report have made lasting contributions. Asked about the motivation for the publication of Clonmacnoise Studies, King said:

I was struck on one occasion by the remark that all of this information would be published in some obscure journal and that lectures would be given in foreign places or 'up in Dublin', and that the present-day inhabitants of Clonmacnoise would never get the opportunity to learn more about their native place. It was with this challenge in mind and with the realisation that there was a genuine thirst for knowledge about the site that the first Clonmacnoise seminar came about.

King has lived up to her word. The proceedings of the first seminar were published in 1998 and the significance of this second volume is that it demonstrates the reality of the series and reassures the world of scholarship that future volumes will appear.

One of the major unresolved problems regarding Clonmacnoise is the extent of the monastery. How large was it? Thirty-five years ago, Charles Thomas was the first to attempt to delineate the line of the vallum or monastic enclosure. He identified it as a surviving bank and ditch on high ground to the south of the complex. He lined this up with some surviving field boundaries to produce a roughly sub-rectangular enclosure, which was comparable to what was then known about the excavated example at Iona. In the first paper in this volume Donald Murphy places us all in his debt by establishing the position of the enclosure and it has proved to be different from the line proposed by Thomas. It is closer to the church complex and it was filled in towards the end of the eighth century when the monastery expanded beyond these bounds. Murphy suggests that the expansion may be connected with the construction of a major bridge across the Shannon in 804. The enclosure ditch was 5.00-6.20 m in width and 3.75 m in depth, which together with an internal bank, topped probably by a stockade, would have been an impressive rampart. Murphy is wrong, however, in thinking that Adomnán's Life of St Columba provides evidence that the ditch existed in the sixth century (pp 19-20). The early Irish, like most of their contemporary European counterparts, did not possess a modern historical sense. The only function of the past was to demonstrate current realities and it was adjusted accordingly. Adomnán was no Bede and certainly not a Ranke. The vallum may well have been in existence in the sixth century but the documentary evidence can only be used to show that it was present c.697, when Adomnán wrote.

The extent of the monastery is also the subject of Harold Mytum's paper but, in addition, he is also interested in the character of settlement on the site. He has used several pioneering forms of non-intrusive geophysical survey. Some methods were more satisfactory than others and resistivity survey, for instance, was disappointing because it tended to identify geological rather than archaeological features. Nonetheless, Mytum proposes an interesting settlement model, with the ritual complex at the core. Domestic settlement concentrated on the north (between the churches and the river) and on the east, which has been the focus of Heather King's excavations. The density of settlement on the east may be related to the position of the Nun's Church, which was a second ritual focus, and to the presence of the Pilgrim's Road, one of the principal route ways to the monastery. Domestic evidence is also present on the west but it is more dispersed than elsewhere. Mytum's work did not discover any sign of enclosures but, interestingly, the settlement evidence tended to have annular boundaries. He also found that the low bank regarded by Thomas as a possible monastic vallum is of relatively modern date. Mytum's work also provides evidence concerning the depth of surviving deposits on the site, something that will be very useful for future research.

Conleth Manning has done more than anyone since Leask to establish the chronology of pre-Norman Irish churches and his demonstration, published in volume one of Clonmacnoise Studies, that the cathedral is the daimliag of 909 was a tour de force both of scholarship and field observation. In this volume he directs his attention to the other pre-Norman buildings at the centre of the site. He suggests that Temple Ciarán, the small chapel or shrine built over the reputed burial place of the saint, was erected at the same time as the cathedral and it may even be slightly earlier because it is orientated differently from all of the other churches. Its round-headed doorway, which seems to be original, may be the earliest arch of mortared stone in Ireland. Manning proposes as a general rule that the deeper the antae (the projections of the side walls beyond the gable ends that were intended to support the ends of a roof carried out over the gables) the earlier the date and on this basis he suggests that Temple Dowling probably belongs to the late tenth- or early eleventh-century. He also identifies a previously unrecognised fragment of the original Nun's Church and demonstrates that the surviving round tower was constructed in 1124.

The Nun's Church is the subject of a detailed treatment by Jennifer Ní Grádaigh who argues that it was built, as the annals suggest, in 1167 at the behest of Derbforgaill. She re-evaluates the reconstruction work carried out by James Graves and the Kilkenny Archaeological Society in 1864-5 and concludes that 'while it was not as meticulous as modern-day archaeology would require, it was by the standards of the day highly enlightened and by any standards very carefully and sensibly carried out'. The reconstruction work is also the subject of Keith Emerick's paper. He is particularly informative on its role in the development of the 'philosophy of repair'. Unfortunately the standards of the Kilkenny Archaeological Society were forgotten when the care of ancient ecclesiastical monuments passed to the Board of Works in 1869. In England one does not find work of comparable quality until after the First World War when the monastic remains at Whitby, which had been shelled by the German navy, were rebuilt.

Aidan MacDonald raises important issues in a paper that details the documentary evidence, primarily annalistic, relating to the daimliag (or cathedral), the dairthech (now Temple Kelly) and eaglais beag (Temple Ciarán). He also provides a very full list of bishops of (and bishops at) Clonmacnoise and concludes that there were bishops of Clonmacnoise from the late ninth or early tenth century, whether they were bishops of a territorial diocese or not. His suggestion that the daimliag was built specifically as a bishop's church in 909 has much to commend it and reinforces the importance of that year as a key date in the evolution of the monastery. He views the role of the daimliag as parallel and complementary to the abbot's church, which he identifies as the dairthech (literally, 'oak house'). This timber building was in use from early times until the twelfth century and MacDonald is surely right in suggesting that its demise in 1167 was related to the declining role of abbots in the life of the community. The dairthech at Kildare, which I have suggested elsewhere was the same as Cogitosus's basilica, had a similarly long life. The origin and function of multiple churches in early Irish monasteries is a subject worth further study. It is a pity that MacDonald did not rectify his dates but simply cites the annalistic years. Accordingly, while some of his dates are accurate, others and not and the reader wishing to use this paper as an aid to further work will have to go back to the published annals and correct the dates appropriately.

Edel Bhreatnach re-examines some of the literary sources originating at Clonmacnoise in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. She indicates that Lebor na hUidhre is a complex production that was not written exclusively at the site but she concludes, with Ó Cuív, that Rawlinson B.502 was 'glossed and possibly written at a scriptorium attached to the monastery of Clonmacnoise'. The difficulties of interpreting the tantalising references to monuments in medieval Irish poetry are highlighted by one example from the poet MacCoise in his elegy on the death of Ó Ruairc: An t-ór dearg so for a leacht/ do leaghadh féachtfor a se 'this red gold on his tomb which was some time since melted upon it'. Bhreathnach interprets it as referring perhaps to an engraved or cast-bronze grave cover of Limoges type (p. 102), while Swift considers it 'most easily interpreted as the type of inset Gothic lettering often found around the outer edges of later medieval tombstones' (p. 106). Given that the poem is probably of late medieval date, it would seem more likely that a lost brass is referred to. Cathy Swift's paper highlights the importance of publishing a new catalogue of the pre-Norman cross-slabs of Clonmacnoise. She warns about the tendency to date slabs on the basis of names found in the annals. The names tend to be common and the absence of patronymics or titles makes it difficult to be sure of the identity of those commemorated. By drawing comparisons with Iona and Islay, she also indicates that one may be able to identify the outlying estates of Clonmacnoise on the basis of concentrations of Clonmacnoise-style slabs at sites in the Shannon basin such as Bealin and Lemanaghan.

Settlement at Clonmacnoise did not cease with the decline of the monastery and for a time in the thirteenth century it was the site of an important castle, although there is no mention of it in the modern interpretative centre. Kieran O'Conor and Conleth Manning provide the first detailed survey and interpretation of this structure, which was built beside a natural harbour. The defences consisted of an inner ward dominated by a masonry hall-keep, an outer ward of earth-and-timber defences with wooden towers at the corners, and a barbican controlling access to the complex. It was built in 1214 on the orders of John de Grey, justiciar of Ireland, as part of a policy to control the midlands as far as the Shannon. The Gaelic Irish remained strong in the area, however, and the castle was captured in 1214 (presumably while it was being built), in 1223 and again in 1227. It is last mentioned in government records in 1233 and a record of 1288 suggests that by then it was long outside of official control. The authors attribute the present collapsed state of the keep to medieval undermining but, in my view, it is more likely to have resulted from slighting during the wars of the seventeenth century.

The volume also contains shorter pieces by Cathal Ó Háinle and Con Manning on an unrecorded seventeenth-century chalice from Clonmacnoise and by Peter Harbison on three nineteenth-century drawings of Clonmacnoise.

As is evident from the above, this is a scholarly study of enduring value but it is also a book that can be picked up and read by any intelligent reader. It is excellently edited (I did not notice a single misprint or misspelling), handsomely produced, attractively illustrated and a bargain at the price. Further volumes are promised on the early medieval bridge, on the excavation of the high crosses, and on the excavation of the Old Graveyard. Assuming the standards of the present work are maintained the series will constitute a remarkable contribution to the study of Irish archaeology.

Following the discovery of the first recorded ogham stone from Co.Offaly while digging a grave in the New Graveyard at Clonmacnoise in 1990 (see Archaeology Ireland, Winter 1991, Vol.5 No.4, 10 -11) funds were made available by the Office of Public Works for a limited excavation. The area had long been known to be rich in archaeological remains and grave openings had continuously revealed archaeological deposits of between 1.3m-2.7m throughout the graveyard. The results of the 1990 excavations have initiated a programme of investigation which is on-going with the kind permission of Offaly County Council.

The Site

The new graveyard is located to the east of the monastic enclosure on an esker ridge (the Eiscer Riada) which runs east - west through the monastic complex. The ground slopes markedly from the top of the esker on the south to the Clonmacnoise Callows and the Shannon on the north. The graveyard is bisected by the Pilgrim's Road which runs from the monastery eastwards to the Nun's Chapel. It is almost completely filled with graves apart from an area in the north-west corner where the excavations have been taking place. Four cuttings have been opened to date and these are located immediately inside the western perimeter wall and close to the grave in which the ogham stone was discovered.

Settlement evidence

The earliest evidence of occupation on the site are a series of postholes in the natural sandy soil of the esker ridge. Some of these would have held posts of 15-20cm in diameter while others are stake holes of between 5 -12cm. These suggest that post and wattle houses were the earliest features on the site. Above this, approximately one-third of a round house was discovered in the form of a wall, a hearth and a clay floor. The wall of the house was represented by stone foundations three courses in height and built of boulders ranging in size from c. 20cm in diameter to 70cm. It was better faced externally than internally. There was no evidence for posts within the wall, the stone foundation may have supported a sod wall. Adjacent to the wall on the west (internally) there was a compact layer of yellow/brown clay c. 25cm deep, into which a stone-lined hearth was set. To the east of the wall (externally) the stratigraphy was of layers of gravel and sand which may represent a path or a gravelled surface immediately outside the house. The ogham stone which initiated this campaign of investigation was found lying flat on the ground immediately outside the east wall of the house and as it bears evidence of having been re-used as a sharpening stone it is possible that the inhabitants of the round house were making practical use of the stone.

Cut through the floor of the house and elsewhere on the site a number of pits have been excavated in which large quantities of animal bone, fish bones, seeds and nuts have been found. The precise function of one particularly large pit shaft has yet to be determined. It was built by digging a pit 3m wide at the mouth and 2.6m deep.

Timber planks were placed at the base of the shaft and these may have formed base plates for timber uprights. The timber-lined pit 1.34m in width was then braced with large stones and the area between the edge of the rectangular pit and the outer one was backfilled. It may have functioned as a well as there was very little domestic refuse in it. A number of iron objects found at the bottom could suggest that they had been dropped in by accident.

Industrial activity

Two corn-drying kilns built side by side were located to the south of the house. Both were almost circular in shape and were set above a deep pile of stones. Only the oven end of both kilns survived as the 'well-shaft' was cut through them and removed all evidence for the furnace end.

The ovens were oriented to the west with the furnace to the east. One kiln was built by giving the underlying stones a saucer or pudding-bowl shape and setting one large flat stone as the base for the oven and two uprights to form the passage of the flue. This was then plastered with a thick layer of yellow daub which subsequently became reddened where it was in direct contact with heat. This may have been used on a few occasions before the second kiln was built. The floor of this kiln had twelve stake-holes running in a circle below the rim and these may represent evidence of supports for a cover or a mat or tray for holding corn.

Other industrial activity in the area includes iron, bronze, gold and antler working. Iron objects would have been an essential requirement for any early medieval community and while the furnaces and smithing hearths have not been located to date iron-working is attested by large quantities of iron slag and furnace bottoms. The finished products of the smith include knives and dress pins for ever day use and tools for the other craft workers such as gouges, punches, chisels and nails. Many finished bronze objects have been recovered but the manufacturing debris is also present in the form of crucibles for melting the copper alloy, slag, tuyere fragments together with unfinished and cut-off pieces of bronze. Gold-working was also carried on nearby as a single crucible fragment has been found with a bead of gold still adhering to the inner surface. Antler-working is evident from the number of cut and sawn pieces of antler tine and partly finished objects such as plates for bone combs and handles for knives.

Other finds

Over eight hundred objects have been recovered. The majority of these are of iron but worked bone and antler, bronze, glass and jet items have also been found. Among the iron objects are several knives; one with traces of a bone handle, a disc-headed pin, a spiral-ringed loop-headed pin, nails, rivets, staples and an escutcheon. Bronze finds include strap-tags, tweezers, decorated stick pins, loop-headed pins and mounts. The most unusual piece is a mount with animal head. A baluster-shaped section links the mount to the head which has a projecting snout. There is a circular perforation from the back of the head through the snout which has two rows of serrations representing teeth. The eyes and kidney-shaped ears are filled with red enamel. Bone and antler objects include a decorated pin, a knife handle, a trial piece with carved head and interlace pattern, mounts, combs and a large number of small bone points (20mm in average length). Jet or lignite bracelet fragments, blue and green glass beads, a fragment of a blue glass bracelet with white inlay and E ware were also found. Two Hiberno-Norse coins dating to the period AD 1020-60 were found this season in a disturbed context.

Shortly after the excavation began this year a fragment of a cross slab was found in a wall of the farm buildings which are located immediately south-east of the modern enclosure. This piece is just one of a large number of cross slabs that were broken up and re-used in the construction of buildings and walls in the area. Clonmacnoise has the largest collection of cross-slabs in the country but one wonders how many more are still awaiting discovery as, in addition to their re-use in construction, there was a custom of incorporating fragments of cross slabs in the back-fill of graves until relatively modern times.

Conclusions

The features uncovered during the excavation to date indicate domestic and industrial activity in this part of the monastic enclosure at Clonmacnoise while the majority of finds would suggest a date in the second half of the first millennium AD. Very little evidence has appeared for any intensive occupation in the post-l000 period apart from the Hiberno-Norse coins and some stick pins. The thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, when the nearby castle was occupied, are represented by a few shreds of medieval pottery and a bronze stirrup-shaped finger ring. There is no material, as yet, from the later medieval period. It would seem that the site of the 'city' of Clonmacnoise was forgotten and that the area was given over to agriculture. Now, as we uncover the houses, pathways and workshops of this great monastic site we can see how the ridge and furrow cultivation amid plough-cut furrows of the eighteenth to twentieth centuries have cut through the fragile remains of the seventh, eight and ninth centuries. Much more tragic, however, is the fact that the full story of the 'city' of Clonmacnoise can never he known because of a decision in the 1950s to allow the area to be turned into a modern graveyard without any archaeological investigation.