RAHAN MONASTIC SITE - Offaly County Council

APPENDICESSmall ChurchIn 1845 Petrie described the church to the east of the Church of St Carthage and its doorway as being:. . . nearly entire, [it] is worthy of an ampler notice in this place, on account of its very perfect andbeautiful doorway, the ornaments of which, though possibly not of equal age with those of theprincipal church, already described, indicate at least a very considerable antiquity. The generalarchitectural character of this doorway will be sufficiently understood from the preceding engraving,from which it will also be seen that its jambs have the inclination inwards, so characteristic ofthe earlier Irish architecture. In height, this doorway measures, externally, five feet four inchesfrom the bases to the tops of the imposts, and six feet seven inches to the vertex of the arch; andin width, two feet six inches between the capitals, and two feet nine inches between the bases. Inform, the church is a simple oblong, measuring externally thirty-nine feet by twenty-three; and itsmassive polygonal masonry is of the earliest Christian style. It was lighted by two windows, one, asusual, in the centre of the east wall, and the other at the upper end of the south wall: the formeris quite ruined, and the latter is a restoration of the fifteenth century. It is built throughout of thelimestone of the district, and the ornaments on its doorway are remarkable for their sharpness andbeauty of execution. As is usual in the architecture of this class, the ornaments on the bases of thesemi-columns differ in their details, those on the south side being plain mouldings, while those onthe north present the figure of a serpent, as shown in the accompanying engraving. 841955 LeaskLeask described the west doorway of the smaller church and considered the Scandinavian influences on the artstyle of this doorway in the context of other Romanesque churches in Ireland. He states that:In the west wall of the smaller church at Rahan, a structure apparently rebuilt in the fifteenth centuryand incorporating materials from an older building, is an interesting doorway. It is made of the hard,blue-grey limestone of the Irish central plain and its details are still sharp and clear. The single archis deeply notched to express the chevrons of face and soffit but the spandrel ornaments are in thefamiliar low-relief technique. A hollow-chamfered hood of late style terminates in beast-head stopsand the abaci are of the same section but narrower. Scalloped capitals, with low relief ornament onthe pleatings, crown the inclined jambs which have engaged columns worked on them. The basesare of small projection and stand on chamfered plinths. To right and left, in the position of an outerorder, similar bases project from the wall: they carried or were intended to carry round shafts whoseonly function would be to support the ends of the hood-moulding. (Shafts with the same functionexist at Clonmacnoise, where, however, the hood-moulding of the west door of the Nuns’ Churchis broader and projects further than at Rahan II). Most notable about this doorway [Kilmore, Co.Cavan] is the markedly Scandinavian character of the decoration on both faces of the innermost archand the return faces of the jambs. Equally of far northern inspiration are the dragonhead capitalsof the three stout, engaged-columns of the outer orders. The inner jamb and arch are square inplan with a slight arris roll, and on the face and soffit of the latter is interlaced ornament of narrowand bifurcating broader strands: the vertebral or chain pattern of Norway, found so much in Vikingmemorials in the Isle of Man and on Northumbrian crosses. The zoomorphic interlacements in thepanels of the inner jamb are also Scandinavian. Kilmore, though showing more of the motives ofViking art than any other single Irish architectural work, is by no means the only example whichshows this influence; it has been noted already in a capital at Killeshin and will be met with againat Clonmacnoise and other places. 8582