432 



xso. 41. Plan of Killeshin old church. 



No. 42. Plan of the old church of I\Iaghera, county of Deny. 



Iso. 43. Details of the mouldings of the doorway and east window 

 of the old church of Haghera, county of Deny. 



No. 44. Plan of the priests' house attached to the old church of 

 Haghera. 



Xo. 45. Interior view of the choir and east gable of the old church 

 on Holm Patrick, Skerry Island, Skenies, county of Dublin.* 



This structure, which is probably of the twelfth century, or early in 

 the thirteenth, has the choir stone-roofed and groined, being pierced 

 at the east end by two semicircular-headed windows, so far apart as to 

 allow a narrow semicircular-headed niche between them. All the win- 

 dow casings, as well as the quoins of the main building, are of calc 

 tufa — a material sometimes used in the construction of twelfth and 

 thirteenth century churches, as in the roof of Cormac's Chapel at Cashel. 

 This stone, from its porosity, is remarkably light, and from its exposed 

 position at this locality is externally decayed, though singularly sound, 

 all circumstances considered. 



No. 46. Exterior view of the window of the north wall of the chan- 

 cel of the same church. 



No. 47. Plan of the same old church. 



No. 48. Exterior view of the doorway in the west gable of the old 

 church of Clone, in the county of Wexford, near Eerns. 



As in the doorway of the old church of If aghera, wehave here a fine ex- 

 ample of the transition style of church architecture between the eleventh 

 and thirteenth centuries. The form of the outer portion of the door is 

 essentially ancient, while the surrounding moulding, with the surmount- 

 ing semicircular arch, is clearly in the style of the thirteenth century. 

 TTe have now no means of judging what was the exact character of the 

 external arch ; it was, however, formed of stones not bonded into the 

 masonry of the gable, and in this respect resembled the arch over the 

 doorway of the Pound Tower of Dromiskin, near Dundalk.f "We know, 

 however, that the arch was decorated round its outer margin by five hu- 

 man heads, four of which are still in sitzi, the fifth being placed over St. 

 Edan'sWell, opposite to the present parish church of Eerns. The head at 

 the crown of the arch is that of a bishop or mitred abbot ; lower down, on 

 the north side, is the head of the king or chieftain; and on the opposite 

 corresponding side that of the queen, or wife of the chieftain : at the 

 springing of the arch, on the north side, is the head of what we may 

 suppose to be the architect, and which is now to be seen over St. Edan's 

 Well ; and at the corresponding side is a grotesque face, and on the stone 



* During a recent visit to Holm Patrick, I found with regret that the groined roof of 

 the choir had fallen in, and a roughly constructed cattle shed, or possibly a dwelling place, 

 had been erected out of the materials forming the west gable and part of the side walls 

 of the church. From wanton destruction and neglect, this interesting remain will soon 

 be a shapeless mass of ruins. 



+ See Vol. IK. of this series. 



