I've been dreaming of visiting this place for years, and at last we did it, we enjoyed the place and took our photos. When I was editing this webpage I found out that we already came here in the past, and exactly on June 4th, 2001. Though we were here before, we had no memory of that visit, we didn't remember the place or the landscape. For the third time this year we saw a place that we had already seen in the past and couldn't remember it. One of the aim of this website was to be a database for my own use, but it seems I failed...
In the 5th century St. Comghan founded an early monastery here, but the place was plundered and destroyed in 1077. The church that we see today was built in the 12th century, but the east section was added in the 15th century.
The church itself has nothing to offer apart from the magnificent four orders Romanesque west doorway made between 1150 e 1160 and considered as one of the finest in Ireland. The doorway is richly decorated with human and animal carvings, geometric patterns and celtic knots. The fact that the carvings are shallow suggests that the decorations were painted. Above the doorway is a triangular tympanum.
The chancel is aligned to east-northeast (75°).
On the doorway there's an inscription that commemorates the founder Diarmait Mac Murchadha, the king of Leinster that invited the Normans to Ireland in 1169.
To the southwest of the church was a round tower, but it was destroyed in 1703.
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