347 



built, as appears by its own records so early as 1038, upwards of 100 

 years before the English invasion ; and Saint Patrick's being built in 

 1190, gave Dublin the distinction of two cathedrals, an honour which 

 we believe no other city can boast, except Saragossa in Spain. In 1100 

 the church of Dungiven, in the County of Londonderry, is said to have 

 been founded by the O'Cathairs ; it was of mixed architecture, and 

 its ruins yet remain.* In 1125 Celsus covered the roof of Armagh 

 Cathedral with tiles. -f" In 1145 it is expressly recorded that Gelasius 

 constructed a prodigious limekiln, in order to procure sufficient mor- 

 tar for repairing the Church of Armagh, and other sacred edifices. J 

 In 1162 there is a notice of one of those structures already mentioned, 

 and called a casiol, built round a church at Derry; ( "lapideum am- 

 bitum qui vulgo casiol anurlair vocatur.")§ About A. D. 1170, the 

 cathedral of Cashel is supposed to have been founded, || as was about 

 the same period the abbey of Holy Cross in the same county ; and 

 certainly even these few specimens which we have here enumerated, 

 afford no mean notion of what the taste of the country might have 

 effected, but for the confusion and revolutions that checked all culti- 



* Sampson's Londonderry, p. 225. 



f " Tegulis integre contecta et restaurata est ecclesia Cathedralis Ardmachana per sanc- 

 tum Celsum archiepiscopum, post quam pro annis centum triginta non nisi ex parte fuisset con- 

 tecta."— Trias Thaum. p. 300. 



X Cogitans de Ardmachana basilica aliisque sacris aedibus adhaerentibus reparandis, 

 extruxit, procalceet cemento in hunc finem excoquendo, ingentismolisfornacem,cujus latitu- 

 de ab omni parte erat sexaginta pedes protensa." — Trias Thaum. p. 305. 



§ Trias Thaum. p. 505. 



II Watkinson, in his Philosophical Survey, (p. 123,) alludes to an inquisition of the second 

 of Henry the Fourth, which, through the kindness of Mr. Hardiman, we have seen. The 

 jurors were required as to the founder of the Church of Cashel, and the time of its foundation ; 

 and they say on their oaths that it was founded by Donald More O'Breen, lonp before the time 

 of Henry the Second, (diu ante conquestum,) and that King John, by letters patent con- 

 firmed his donation and foundation.— Rot. Pat. Jac. 1. second year, 3 part dorso. 



Y Y 2 



