House - medieval

The National Monuments Service's description

National Monument No. 81. Only the wall footings survive of the building or buildings marked on Blaymire's 17th century plan of Clonmacnoise dating from 1658 which identified this building as the ‘Residentiary house of the Dean, Archdeacon etc.’ (Manning 1998, 17). This 1658 plan of Clonmacnoise which is now housed in the British Library (Add. MS 4787 f276) is based on an original plan dating from 1621 (Manning 1998, 16). On this plan at least two buildings are shown located on the external or SE face of the enclosing boundary of Clonmacnoise graveyard. The plan also depicts entrances into this building facing north, south, east and west; those to the west and south are shown as gaps, but the other two are depicted as arched openings (Manning 1998, 17).
This building is depicted on the 1838 edition of the OS 6-inch map as a square-shaped structure, located in the SE quadrant of Clonmacnoise graveyard that is now shown against the W face of the wall enclosing the graveyard. On this 6-inch map the building is depicted as the ‘Residentiary Houses of the Dean, Archdeacon & c.’. On the revised 1908 ed. OS 6-inch map the building is depicted as a two room long rectangular building aligned NNE-SSW and is now annotated on the map as, ‘houses of the Dean, Archdeacon & c. (in Ruins)’.

Compiled by: Caimin O’Brien

Date of upload: 09 August 2012

References

Manning, C. 1998 The very earliest plan of Clonmacnoise. Archaeology Ireland 12 (1), 16-7.