233 



has been conceived to be a monument of Danish architecture; if it 

 be so, as is suggested by Mr. Brewer,* can it be suppused that a 

 people, contented with so rude and poor a building for the sacred 

 purpose of an oratory and a shrine for the relics of St. Olave, 

 could have been the architects of the massy and beautifully built 

 round towers of Ireland ? It is however certainly of a date prior to 

 the Anglo-Norman invasion, as may be judged from the manner of 

 building, from the absence of all these marks and embellishments, 

 which have been satisfactorily traced from the twelfth century down, 

 and from the stone roof ; for we have no record of any works of this 

 nature subsequent to that period. The roof is still in good preserva- 

 tion, the outer part, rising in a very steep wedge shape, is covered 

 with smooth oblong stones from nine inches to a foot long, laid 

 close together, flat, and imbedded in cement, but never overlapping 

 each other. In the neatness and legularity of the work it presents a 

 quite different appearance from the wall-like roof of St, Columb's 

 house ; there is here a great thickness of solid mason-work between 

 the ridge of the roof and the centre of the pointed arch which forms 

 the cieling of the upper story : this arch is of flatish irregular stones, 

 with an uncommon quantity of mortar between them. The arch is 

 extremely well turned, and has not given in any part : about the 

 middle under the tower the cieling is groined. The whole length 

 of the building is forty-eight feet by eighteen wide, which in the 

 lower story is divided into two chambers ; that to the east appears 

 to have been the chapel, having a muUioned window, eight feet high 

 and three feet ten inches wide ; and on the south side another, not 

 quite so large, which has lost all the tracery. In the walls are 

 many small square niches or recesses, the object of which it is dif- 



* Beauties of Ireland, I. p. 236. 

 VOL. XV. H H 



