RAHAN MONASTIC SITE - Offaly County Council

in a side tower or turret which leads to the chamber above, as in Cormac’s Chapel. At a later datea small portion of the west of the building has been constructed to answer all the purposes of adwelling-house, which was evidently separated from the sacred portion of the structure by a woodenpartition, or possibly thin wall, and divided by a wooden floor into a basement and upper story. Astaircase in the thickness of the wall leads to a doorway opening on the chamber in the upper floor.This peculiarity is to be seen in the church of St. Catherine, in the County of Wexford, and the oldchurch of Castle Gregory, in the County of Kerry, as well as in a fortified church at Clonmines, on thecoast of Wexford. 62APPENDICES1894 Margaret StokesIn 1894 Margaret Stokes described the carvings of the chancel arch at Rahan in the following terms:The arches or orders of the Irish doorways spring more directly than do the Norman, from the sidesor jambs, which incline towards them from the base, the sides of these doorways seeming to be atransition from the jambs and actual shafts of the older square-headed doorway. The angular sidesof the three or four orders are rounded off and channelled into groups of bowtels, with merely slightprojections at the feet, scarcely to be termed bases; and, instead of separate capitals to each, asingle entablature unites the whole, often terminating at the angles with heads of a strikinglyarchaic character. This archaic character is shown in the accompanying drawings of capitals fromchurches of Clonaltin and Inchagoile on Lough Corrib. 631910 Arthur ChampneyIn his book on Irish Ecclesiastical Architecture of 1910, Arthur Champney suggested that Petrie’s dating of theChurch of St Carthage to the eighth century was incorrect, and that it belonged to the twelfth century. 641938 / 1955 Harold LeaskIn 1938 Harold Leask commented on the complexity of Rahan Church stating that:The analysis of the building itself, apart from its decorative features, is not easy, but I have formedthe opinion that the archway and the North and South walls and part of the east wall of the chancelare coeval and that the whole was vaulted at the level of the inner intrados of the chancel arch.In his 1938 article he states that the:nave is modern but the lower parts of the walls are ancient. It is not rectangular and its axis is notthe same as that of the chancel. A church with nave and chancel of one date as the original erectionhere must have been, would not have been so irregular in plan. My view is that the nave is a fifteenthcentury reconstruction again largely rebuilt in modern times. 65He also comments on the upper vault stating that it:may be original and if so is probably corbelled but the modern plastering obscures the structure andmakes analysis impossible. My view, however, is that the vault is late, probably fifteenth centuryand corresponds with the vaulting, now gone, of the large wing building to the north which is alsoprobably of fifteenth century date. 66In 1955 he assigned the chancel of the church at Rahan to Phase 1 of the Romanesque period, dating from theend of the eleventh through to the first decades of the twelfth century. He described Rahan as:The early phase of the full Romanesque that in which plain, square-sectioned arches are borne byplain shafts or colonetted jambs, but with the full complement of ornamented base, capital andabacus is not represented by many examples. Foremost amongst these is the chancel archway ofthe larger church still in use at Rahan. This small but impressive portal is in three orders. The archesare square in section and quite undecorated but the jambs the piers from which they rise with theirbases and capitals, exhibit treatment and features, which are to become characteristic of the Irishstyle. The piers are square in plan but shallowly wrought at each angle into engaged colonettes,bounded by narrow fillets of angular section. As will be seen this shallow modelling was favoured77