St Carthach's Church

National Monument No. 82. Associated with St. Carthach who founded a monastery here in the sixth century. Present remains consist of two churches, a possible tower house an Early Christian cross-slab (Crawford 1916, 166) which was unlocated. The Protestant nave and chancel church is built around the chancel of a Romanesque cruciform church the N transept of which can still be seen while the nave was built in 1732 (Harbison 1970, 206-7). Inside the church are the well preserved remains of a triple ordered chancel arch with modern E window and original rose window which may originally have been located in the W gable is now located in the apex of E gable (Harbison 1970, 206-7). A small narrow round arched door on N and S wall of chancel gives access to the destroyed barrel vaulted transepts. To the E of this church are the remains of a rectangular church (OF016-015010) with fine Romanesque single ordered W door which was incorporated into a 15 - 16th century church. Directly over W door there is a rectangular slit window, round arched window of Romanesque date at W end of S wall, late medieval single light ogee window at E end of S wall and single light ogee window in E gable. The possible tower house (OF016-015009-) which has been previously classified as a church is located in the E corner of the Roman Catholic cemetery and is poorly preserved with traces of a barrel vault over the ground floor the springing of which is visible at the E end of the building, no other architectural features are visible. Two fragments of a late medieval floriated graveslab with partial inscription were recently found in the graveyard (OF016-015002-). Large ecclesiastical enclosure (OF015-015005-) now utilised as field boundaries to the S, E and W. 3D models of the chancel arch and of the Romanesque round window can be downloaded from Offaly County Council website at www.offaly.ie/eng/Services/Heritage/Archaeology/3D_Surveying_of_Archaeological_Monuments/

(O' Flanagan 1933, vol. 2, 48-9; Stanley 1870-1, 27-9; Johnson-Newman 1971, 169-70)

Testing was carried out under licence no. 04E0759 in advance of proposed drainage works in the graveyard located on the south side of St Carthage's Church, Rahan, Co. Offaly. The nave-and-chancel church is still used by the Church of Ireland and the interior of the church building is badly affected by damp, especially in the chancel area. Testing was carried out to assess the impact of these drainage works on any potential archaeological features and finds in the vicinity of the church. This involved the manual excavation of two trenches in the area of the graveyard adjacent to the south side of the church building, to ascertain the archaeological nature of the soil that has accumulated to a height of 1m against the external facade of the nave and chancel walls. There are a number of post-medieval grave markers visible in the vicinity of the south wall of the church and the test-trenches were laid out in order to avoid these. A number of east-west-orientated skeletons were uncovered following the removal of the topsoil layer in both test-trenches. These were all contained in unmarked graves with no visible traces of coffin remains; they were left in situ. Following consultation, it was agreed that no further excavation was required at this time, as the testing had confirmed that there were unmarked burials located in the vicinity of the area to be impacted on by the proposed drainage works (Excavations Bulletin 2004).

Tony Cummins for Sheila Lane and Associates, AE House, Monahan Road, Cork.