145 
which has since been printed.* Suffice it to say that this pile, which 
measures about 48 by 18 feet, comprises seven apartments and three stone 
staircases, and while its position, east and west, and the character of the 
eastern portion indicate its employment as a place of worship, its other 
features show that its use, as such, was limited to the purposes of an indi- 
vidual hermit, or a small community, who occupied the building.+ It 
would seem that soon after the erection of the parish church of Ballygriffin, 
in the twelfth century, a chapel was built on or beside the site of St. Du- 
lech’s original cell, then probably aruin,and that in its construction refe- 
rence was had to the requirements of a recluse who immured himself 
therein, and only admitted occasional worshippers. The pile, as it now 
stands, consists mainly of three compartments, the east portion, the west 
portion, and the tower; these are coeval in their structure, though differing 
in the character of their masonry, and seem to point to the early part of 
the thirteenth century as the period of their construction. The principal 
window in the south wall of the eastern portion, which is one of the 
oldest features in the building, Mr. Sloane refers to about the year 1230. 
Supposing, then, the church to have been erected at that date for the 
combined purposes of a chapel and an anchorite’s abode, we may conceive 
that several interruptions may, in the lapse of years, have taken place 
in the eremitical character of the ecclesiastics who occupied it, and that, 
from time to time, it may have been the abode of an ordinary chaplain. 
But we have, fortunately, one document on record, which expressly 
states the nature of its occupation in the year 1406, which I shall now 
read, and indeed it was the discovery of it which suggested the present 
communication. It is a letter of Indulgence, entered in the original re- 
gistry of Nicholas Fleming, Archbishop of Armagh, preserved in the 
Registry Office, among the records of that see :— 
“ Titera Indulgencie concessa Anachorite de Seynt Doulagh. 
‘“‘Universis almee matris Ecclesi filiis ad quos preesentes literee nos- 
tre pervencrint, Nicholaus, &c. Quoniam, ut ait Apostolus, &c. Cum 
igitur dominus Eustagius Roche capellanus, vir vitee laudabilis et con- 
versationis honest, anachorita sit inclusus in capella beate Marie Vir- 
ginis ac sanctorum Apostolorum Petri et Pauli§ in Roghomyr|| Seynt 
* Drawings and descriptions of St. Doulagh’s Church, more or less correct, are to be 
seen in Ledwich’s Antiquities, p. 144; Grose’s Antiquities, vol. ii., p. 78; Miss Beau- 
fort’s “‘Essay on the State of Architecture, &c., in Ireland,” in “‘ Transactions of the Royal 
Trish Academy,” vol. xv., Antiq., p. 283; ‘‘ Dublin Penny Journal,” vol. i., p. 265; 
Wakeman’s ‘‘ Handbook of Irish Antiquities” (frontispiece); anda description in Brewer's 
Beauties of Ireland, vol. i., p. 236; and Bell’s Essay on Gothic Architecture, p. 105. 
+ Ware mentions St. Dulachs as one of the anchorite’s cells of Ireland.—Works, 
vol. ii., Antiqq., p. 237. 
{ Anearlier Eustachius de Rupe, Constable of Dublin in 1207, held 3 carucates of land 
in Lusk.—Rot. Lit. Claus. Tur. Lond., p. 786; Rot. Chart. T. L., p. 172. 
§ It is to be observed here that the hermit’s cell is the Chapel of the B. Virgin and 
SS. Peter and Paul, not St. Dulachs. 
|| This may be a clerical error for Cloghyr, the ancient name of St. Doulagh; but see 
Bothomer, infra. 
