Monasterboice

The monastic remains at Monasterboice constitutes a National Monument consisting of a small enclosed graveyard (LH021-062002-) with two small churches (LH021-062003-; LH021-062004-), a round tower (LH021-062006-), three high crosses (LH021-062007-; LH021-062008-; LH021-062009-), a bullaun stone (LH021-062010-), sundial (LH021-062011-) and a number of grave-slabs (LH021-062012-; LH021-062013-; LH021-062014-). It may be located on a prehistoric ritual site as a cist (LH021-062005-) was found beneath the north church (Hasee 1892). Isaac Butler recorded a holy well (LH021-062022-) dedicated to a Saint Kiarnan outside the graveyard at SW in 1744, which explains why this angle is excluded from the graveyard itself (Deane 1922, 106).

The site is best known for its high crosses, especially the magnificent South Cross, which has an inscription declaring that it was erected by Muiredach, who may be the abbot who died in A. D. 924. Accounts of Monasterboice and its crosses can be found in many sources especially Macalister (1946), Roe (1981), Harbison (1979; 1992), Henry (1980), Richardson and Scarry (1990) and Manning (2014).

Founded by St. Buíthe, who died about 520 and who gave his name to the place (Mainistir Buíthe - the monastery of Buíthe), it came to prominence in the Irish annals from the early eighth century and continued to be mentioned frequently up until the twelfth century, mainly in relation to the deaths of ecclesiastics associated with it. Strangely it is one of the very few places in early medieval Ireland with the element mainistir in its name, so much so that it was frequently known by this element alone and ecclesiastics from it were referred to with the epithet mainistreach (of Monasterboice). Examples are Eoghan Mainistreach, abbot of Armagh and Clonard, who died in 834 and, most famous of all, Flann Mainistreach, a great poet and man of learning, who died in 1056. It had close associations both with the Columban federation of churches and with Armagh. Though it is likely to have been raided by the Vikings, there is no clear individual reference to such a raid.

In the twelfth century it lost out in neither becoming the centre of one of the new territorial dioceses nor in becoming the site of a monastery of one of the recently imported continental orders. Indeed it became quickly overshadowed by the first Cistercian house to be established in Ireland, Mellifont (LH023-007002-), which was founded in 1142 less than three miles away to the south-west , while Monasterboice was reduced to the status of a parish church. The settlement appears to have gradually become deserted and a new settlement was established less than a mile to the south-east called Newtown Monasterboice. However, the churches remained a place of local pilgrimage and devotion, and the head of St. Buithe, presumably encased in a metal shrine, was kept in one of the churches up to the early sixteenth century (Ó Riain 2011, 131-3). By the seventeenth century the churches were in ruin but the graveyard has continued as a place of burial up to the present day.

The present graveyard containing the churches and crosses is but a small part of the large settlement that was here in early medieval times. The extent of this settlement is indicated by records of souterrains in the surrounding fields and by traces of large enclosures visible in aerial photographs. A geophysical survey carried out in 2008 has given us a more accurate picture of the extent and nature of the subsurface archaeological features around the graveyard (Manning 2014). Ecclesiastical sites like Monasterboice had a sizeable lay population, involved in farming, craft-work and trade, living within the outer enclosure.

An aerial photograph taken by L. Swan shows cropmarks indicating the remains of the original outer enclosure (Roe 1981, pl. XXI). Three souterrains (LH021-062015-; LH021-062017-; LH021-062018-) are known from within it (Roe 1981, 76). Aerial photograph (GB90.BH.27) shows a curved fosse delimiting part of the ecclesiastical enclosure surrounding the church and round tower; the fosse appears partly as a cropmark (foreground) and partly as a low-level earthwork (in field directly south of farm). A Geophysical survey suggests the presence of an inner enclosure (diam. c. 130m) around the graveyard and an outer oval enclosure (dims c. 350m NW-SE; c. 250m NE-SW), both defined by fosses (Anon. 2009, fig. 2). Rescue excavation (C000723) has confirmed the line of the outer enclosure on the east side (Murphy and Stirland 2016) as determined by Gosling in Roe (1981).