228 



house; lience also, when more splendid edifices were reared, the 

 preservation of so many of these otherwise insignificant buildings as 

 undoubted proofs of the antiquity and holiness of the place.* 



Much as has been written upon the ecclesiastical antiquities of 

 Ireland, the earliest Christian remains have not yet been fully inves- 

 tigated ; these relics of the olden time are small, and in the general 

 but insignificant, and have therefore been too often overlooked, the 

 evidence which they afford of the early planting of Christianity in 

 the island not being sufficiently appreciated. These remains might 

 assist the speculations of the historian and the antiquarian architect, 

 by supplying a link in the architectural chain, and in this view are 

 highly deserving of observation. 



Of the innumerable churches and monasteries founded in the 

 fifth, sixth, and seventh centuries, but a few, and those uncertain, 

 fragments have descended to these limes ; and the notices, in various 

 authors, of these humble ruins, are so scattered and so indistinct as to 

 render it difficult to i)resent the subject in such a form as to afford 

 clear imformation, or to offer any remarks deserving of attention. 



By far the greater part of the early churches were undoubtedly 

 constructed of wood, probably of oak jjlanks thatched with reeds, 

 according to the custom of the Scots, as Bede says in describing the 

 church built at Lindisfarn in the year 635. f But there is reason 

 to think, that though this was the mode most commonly followed* 

 yet that some were certainly built of stone. Of these structures, 

 although the dates of their foundations are in most instances re- 

 corded, yet of the greater number no trace of the original building 

 remains: most of them were rebuilt by the English settlers, and 



* Whitelaw's History of Dublin, I. p. 264. 

 I Hist. Eccles. lib. v. cap. 22, 



