RAHAN MONASTIC SITE - Offaly County Council

2.0 UNDERSTANDING THE PLACEBuilding News of 15 September 1911In this long and rather rambling article, Martin talks more generally about the construction of early churches inBritain and Ireland while musing on what he considers to be their Danish, Anglo-Saxon, Egyptian and Normaninfluences. Like his interpretation of the various building phases at Rahan, this article is a mixture of scholarlyappraisal and inaccurate generalisation. Sadly it adds little to our understanding of Rahan, other than to remindus that in Ireland the erection of mortared structures evolved relatively late, and that one always had to be waryabout the provenance of carved decorative work that is found in Irish ruins. This is particularly relevant to Rahanwhere the circular Romanesque east window and the fifteenth century single light ogee headed, north windowin the Church of St Carthage together with the Romanesque doorway to the smaller church, may have all beenmoved from other locations, and possibly other buildings.Figure 23. Drawing by William Martinof dragon consuming its own tail fromsingle light ogee-headed window innorth wall of nave. (1911)Building News of 13 October 1911The brief article about Rahan that appears in October 1911 is of particular interest as itdescribes in detail the discovery and integration of the fifteenth century window in thenorth wall of the nave. This richly ornamented window contains intricate foliate reliefin the spandrels above the single light ogee-head, together with griffen-like creatureaddressing a bird and a dragon eating its own tail. Included in the article are some finedetailed drawings of the window decoration together with various patterns of interlacingthat occur in the Romanesque round widow in the east gable. The label, sill and lowerjambs of this window were not recovered, although a sill from a window of similar date doesappear at high level built into the rubble of the west gable. Perhaps the most valuableevidence revealed has been uncovered with the removal of the cement under coating. Thetall single light round-headed south windows are entirely constructed of limestone anddiffer from the two round headed windows in the north wall that are also later insertionsbut formed in a locally produced yellow brick. This suggests that the south windowsmay belong to the 1732 repairs while the north windows predate Martin’s work andwere possibly part of the early nineteenth century works (c. 1830) referred to in Lewis’sTopographical Dictionary of 1838. The salvaged fifteenth century opening now containsa fine stained glass window depicting St Carthage by the English studio of Shrigley andHunt that was commissioned as part of William Edward Martin’s repairs of 1911.Figure 24. Drawing by William Martin of griffen-like creatureaddressing a bird from single light ogee-headed window in northwall of nave (1911).Figure 25. Drawing by William Martin of head of single lightogee-headed window in north wall of nave with spandrelsdecorated with vine-leaf carvings (1911).35