O'Hanlon — On St. Malachy's " Monasterium Ibracense" 111 



was a stone house of bee-hive form, then much injured. In diameter 

 its uncemented stone walls were 14 feet 6 inches ; those walls were 6 



Bee -hive-shaped House on Church Island, Co. Kerry. 



feet 6 inches in thickness, and in altitude their highest part only 

 reached 10 feet 6 inches. No other important remark is ventured by 

 Dr. O'Donovan regarding the remains of antiquity on this Island. 



The present writer's admeasurements of the square and fort-like 

 building, on the interior, were 1 1 feet from wall to wall ; while at the 

 base the walls were 5 feet 3 inches in thickness, but they gradually 

 diminished to 4 feet 7 inches at the highest point. Although a very 

 solid structure, it appeared to have been greatly ruined. Nor is this 

 a matter to be wondered at, considering its very elevated, exposed, and 

 uncemented condition. The " bee-hive "-shaped house or cloghaun 

 measured, with a tape line, 86 feet in circumference at the base, which 

 arose over a sort of narrow stone terrace. Interiorly it is nearly cir- 

 cular, and about 14 feet in diameter. The rude walls are 7 feet in 

 thickness at the apparent door-opening — now quite ruinous — and 

 about 9 feet in height, as they then stood. It is less elevated in posi- 

 tion than the other building. At the upper part, the walls remaining 

 are coved to an obtuse point. The stones are so placed above as to 

 form dripping and drooping surfaces on tbe outside ; and it is surpris- 

 ing they have not long since fallen, as they have no mortar to bind 

 them in their position. Of the ruins, the writer was enabled to take 

 two distinct sketches* "What appeared to be the debris of somewhat 



* On application to Miss Stokes, that lady most obligingly allowed the writer 

 an opportunity of inspecting a great number of exquisite photographs of Irish ruins 

 in her possession ; but the ruins here described do not appear among them. 



