RAHAN MONASTIC SITE - Offaly County Council

APPENDICESAppendix 2Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Descriptions of RahanThroughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries the Church of St Carthage has been studied and examinedby some of Ireland’s most distinguished scholars of their day. Although some of this information is no longeracademically valid it is described here because it shows the historiography of the site and illustrates the thoughtsof experts of their day and their ideas about Rahan and how these ideas have changed over the centuries. The firstof these was George Petrie, who published his findings in his Ecclesiastical Architecture of Ireland published in 1845.In this account Petrie thought that the church dated from as early as the eighth century and described it as:Figure 35. 19th century drawing of west doorway of small church(Petrie 1845).1845 Petrie. . . still used as a parish church, the chancel only appearsto be ancient, and even this has suffered the loss of itsoriginal east window. The chancel arch, however, stillremains, as also a circular window richly ornamented,which lighted a chamber placed between the chanceland the roof. The chancel is stone-roofed, as we maywell believe the entire church to have been originally.It is in the ornaments of the chancel archway, however,that the similarity in design and execution to those inthe Tower of Timahoe [Co. Laois] is chiefly found. Thisarchway, as will be seen from the annexed drawing,consists of three rectangular piers at each side, roundedat their angles into semi-columns, which support threesemi-circular arches entirely unornamented, except bya plain architrave on the external one. The capitals, onwhich the greatest richness of ornament is found, arethose on the third, or innermost of these piers at eachside; and, like those at Timahoe, these ornaments,though similar in design, are dissimilar in detail, andtheir bases differ in like manner. 611877 Third Earl of DunravenNotes on Irish Architecture by the Third Earl of Dunraven 1877Some of the earliest photographs ever taken of Irish antiquities occur in Notes on Irish Architecture by Edwin,Third Earl of Dunraven, edited by Margaret Stokes and published in 1877. Sadly, while this book describes theChurch of St Carthage in some detail in word and sketch drawings, the only photograph included of Rahan is ofthe Romanesque entrance door to the second ruined church. This shows the doorway very much as it appearstoday with the west gable largely covered by a thick growth of ivy. Also notable is the total absence of any quoinstones to the west gable, all of which are missing. This is a valuable reminder of common practice that existed inIreland of quarrying stone from ruins for use in other buildings.1878 Margaret StokesIn 1878 Margaret Stokes published an account of her work at Rahan, and in this she considered the function ofthe croft space over the chancel of the church, which she believed to have been a dwelling house for the clergy.She concludes that:These buildings are invested with a peculiar interest from the fact that they were not only placesof worship, but also dwelling houses, the habitable portion being a chamber over the stone-roofedchancel, to which access was gained from the body of the church by one of three different methods.The first and most primitive, as in St. Kevin’s, by a ladder from the body of the church through ahole in the ceiling of the lower story, which hole is afterwards replaced by a doorway over the choirarch, as at Donoughmore, and then a winding staircase, either in the wall, as at St. Saviour’s, or76