Church

The National Monuments Service's description

Located in deciduous woodland on the N side of Inishkeen Island (max. dims c. 800m WNW-ESE; c. 200m NNE-SSW), close to the N shore of Lough Melvin. St Colum or Cainneach of Inishkeen may be identical with St Cainneach of Kilkenny and Aghaboe (Ó Riain 2011, 208-09). No church or graveyard has been identified on the island, but an enclosure (dims c. 240m WNW-ESE; c. 50-60m NNE-SSW) is described in italic lettering on the 1909 ed. of the OS 6-inch map as the ‘Friars Garden’. This is defined by a collapsed rubble bank, best preserved at the E end (Wth 3m; H 0.5-1m), and iron slag was found on the shore at N in the 1940s (SMR file).
Towards the E end of the Friars Garden and c. 20m from the N shore of the island there is a stone slab (H 0.63m; Wth 0.25m; T 0.11m) with an incised cross (H 0.29m; Wth 0.16m) on the E face which is set into a small stone cairn (dims 5m x 3m; H 0.5m). There is a cut-stone base of a pillar nearby. This is a D-shaped stone (dims 0.58m x 0.42m; H 0.2m) with two mouldings. A second cross-slab (LE002-023002-) is now in the National Museum of Ireland (Lucas 1972, 197). It is described (Herity et al. 1997, 105) as a ‘trapezoidal sandstone slab (dims 0.8m x 0.6m; T 0.08m) with two nested roughly equal-armed crosses with forked and T-bar terminals and two concentric circles around the crux.’

The above description is derived from 'The Archaeological Inventory of County Leitrim' compiled by Michael J. Moore (Dublin: Stationery Office, 2003). In certain instances the entries have been revised and updated in the light of recent research.

Date of revised upload: 16 December 2015

References

SMR file - Sites and monuments record files in the National Monuments Service, Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage.

Ó Riain, P. 2011 A dictionary of Irish Saints. Dublin. Four Courts Press.

Lucas, A.T. 1972 National Museum of Ireland: archaeological acquisitions in the year 1969. Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland 102, 181-223.

Herity, M., Kelly, D. and Mattenberger, U. 1997 List of Early Christian cross-slabs in seven north-western counties. Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland 127, 89-124.