RAHAN MONASTIC SITE - Offaly County Council

3.0 PHYSICAL EVIDENCEfifteenth century date. The spandrels of this window are also decorated with the vine-leaf motif, and the hoodmoulding over the window is decorated with a human head carved in relief.Incorporated into the masonry of this church are several flat chamfered cut limestone flagstones thought to havebeen salvaged from the stone roof of the twelfth century Church of St Carthage (pers. comm. Con Manning). Agood early photograph, published in 1877 by the Earl of Dunraven, survives of the west end of this church showingthe Romanesque doorway, with extensive growth of ivy and most of the quoins missing.Site of the Third Church (SMR No. OF016-015017)In a letter of 1677 from Charles O’Molloy to Pope Innocent XI, is a description of three churches at Rahan - oneparochial, one of Christ and one of the Blessed Virgin, not destroyed but well desolated. In a later description ofRahan from 1937, Father Carthage, a Cistercian monk from Mount Melleray Abbey, Co. Waterford, describes whatmay have been the third church - near the small church with the Romanesque doorway the remains of what maypossibly have been a third of these chapels, can be traced in the grass; but as only the bare foundations remain theevidence at present is scarcely satisfactory. 39 A further possibility for the site of what is referred to as the ‘thirdchurch’ is the surviving ruin (which may have been a tower house) in the corner of the Catholic graveyard.Rahan Castle (SMR No. OF016-015018)According to the Annals of Clonmacnoise in 1227, Symon Clifford founded and built the castle of Rahin O’Swanie[Rahan]. According to local tradition, the house marked on the six-inch map as the ‘Bridge Ho.’ stands on, or near,the site of Rahan castle. No remains of this castle have been uncovered within the vicinity of the monastery ornear the site of the Bridge House. According to another local source, Rahan Castle was knocked down when theGrand Canal was constructed in the late 1700s early 1800s as it was on the line of the route of the canal.Plate 37. Remains of possible tower house in modern Roman Catholic cemetery.Tower House (possible) (SMR No. OF016-015009)The third masonry structure still standing within the Rahan monastic enclosure is situated in the east corner of themodern graveyard used and managed by the Catholic Church. This building has a slight base batter and contains theremains of a barrel-vaulted ground floor; it is in a poor state of preservation with no other significant architecturalfeatures visible. A sheela-na-gig was uncovered close to this building in 1971. 40 These scant architectural remainssuggest that this structure may be the ruins of a small tower house of fifteenth or sixteenth century date. JohnO’Donovan writing in the Ordnance Survey letters of 1838 stated that - I think that the old vault standing near theold Church of Rathain is a part of this castle. 4147