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Mr. PETRIE'S Inquiry into the Origin and 



That the first church erected by St. Kevin, within the precincts of the city 

 in the lower part of the valley, was that now popularly called the Lady's Church, 

 in which his tomb remained within the last century, will scarcely admit of 

 doubt : nor is this conclusion at all weakened by the fact, that it no longer 

 bears his name, but that of the Blessed Virgin ; for, as I shall hereafter show, 

 none of the ancient Irish churches were dedicated to the Virgin, or to any of 

 the foreign saints, previously to the twelfth century, and there is not a word 

 in the ancient Lives of St. Kevin, which would indicate that any of the churches 

 of Glendalough were so dedicated at the period when they were written. 



In selecting my next characteristic example of the primitive Irish doorways, 

 I can hardly, therefore, take one more likely to interest the reader than that of 

 St. Kevin's earlier church, near the upper lake, and now called the Reefert 

 Church, which is the " claram cellam" of the quotation above given from the 

 Latin Life of St. Kevin, and which, it will be remembered, continued to be a 

 monastic church to the time of the writer : 



This doorway, which is formed of chiselled blocks of granite, is six feet in 

 height, two feet six inches in width at the top, and two feet nine inches at the 



