Clare Island Survey — History and Archaeology . 2 29 



follows resembling " Acciputer," which seems improbable. Neither can I 

 interpret the apparent a.d. 47 Q. The third slab is very curious ; it has an 

 oblong slit worn rather than cut through the yellow sandstone near the top, 

 then a Latin cross and the letters I.H.S. and B.V. (Plate V.) 



The altar stands near a levelled enclosure 1 5 feet from the well ; this 

 measures 40 feet north and south by 36 feet east and west, the walls being 

 3 feet 6 inches thick, and levelled to the ground. There is a trace of an old 

 ditch at 27 feet distant from the well. 



Cliara " Abbey " (0. S., 85). (Plates II-VI.) 



The most interesting ancient structure on the island is the little 

 Monastery ; despite its simple architecture, it enables us, in a way rarely done 

 by our greater and more ornate monasteries, to realize the appearance of Irish 

 churches before the reign of Henry VIII. Very rarely do we see stucco- 

 work or designs in colour elsewhere ; but at Cliara we get abundant material 

 for a general idea of the colouring, and a hint at the way stucco-work was 

 employed to adorn plain stone-work. The illustrations of these designs may, 

 I hope, prove of value to architectural students, as none of them has been 

 published hitherto. They were traced and copied in colours on five days> 

 three of which were spent in tracing them from a platform of barrels and 

 planks — a weary, painful task. I also devoted time to checking them on 

 subsequent visits, and Dr. George Fogerty photographed several, though (for 

 obvious reasons) photography gives a poor and often an imperfect and 

 inaccurate result, through the curve of the roof and the discoloration of the 

 stucco. 



The "Abbey" consists of a nave 36 feet 6 inches long, and 18 feet 9 

 inches wide, a chancel 19 feet long inside, and 13 feet 2 inches wide, over 

 which is a room reached by narrow staircases up the side walls. Beside 

 this, in line with the eastern face, a northern wing of two stories projects 

 with a staircase in its western wall. The north doorways of the church show 

 that another building ran along tire north wall of the nave, but I could not 

 trace its foundations. Save in the north wing and part of the nave, I saw 

 little that could be even provisionally assigned to a period before 1450, and 

 much seems nearly half a century later. It must be borne in mind that there 

 was a great outburst of church and castle building and restoration during the 

 very obscure fifteenth century, especially all through the provinces of Munster 

 and Connaught. Hundreds of peel towers, many monasteries and churches 

 date entirely from that period, and the vast majority of the older buildings 

 exhibit insertions of the same date. 



The nave calls for but little description. It has a slightly moulded pointed 



