Abbey in Ruins — Report the wrong picture

What is recorded here

Six metres of south wall still stand beside the Augustinian church, perhaps marking the abbot’s house or an anchorite’s cell built when priests died in 1484. The missing rooms do not appear as ghost lines on modern scans, but the land around them is divided into small square plots cut by ancient ditches. That hidden geometry suggests the abbey was never isolated; it sat inside a working landscape where faith, labour and memory repeated themselves across centuries.

Situated on a shelf towards the bottom of a N-facing slope, and c. 150m S of the Augustinian church (CV014-028003-) is a building described as an ‘Abbey (in Ruins)’ on the 1835 (L-shaped) and the 1908 (rectangular) editions of the OS 6-inch map, with earthworks depicting hollow ways of the field system (CV014-028001-) in the vicinity on the latter. Just a portion (L 6m plus; T 0.9m; H 4m) of the S wall of the building survives with a single corbel high on its inner face. The outline (int. dims 16.5m N-S; 8m E-W) extends N as wall footings. This could have been the abbot’s house or a guest house. It might even have been the ‘anchorite’s cell’ that was under construction in 1484 when the annals record the deaths of John O’Farelly and Brian O’Farrelly, priests of Drumlane (AFM). In 1970 human remains, described as a (CV014-028010-) were found in the vicinity of this building but they were not excavated (Cahill and Sikora 2011, ii, 305-6). In 2021 a community group received funding to conduct a topographical and geophysical survey of a large area (dims c. 140m NW-SE; c. 70m NE-SW) of the field surrounding this building. A gradiometer survey revealed that the area is divided into small plots (dims c. 25m E-W; c 25m N-S) defined by negative features that can be interpreted as ditches. They are laid out N-S and are not aligned on the current field boundaries. A resistivity survey in the area of the building records another rectangular area (dims c. 25m x c. 25m) but further walls from the structure itself have not been identified. (Kirk 2022a) The above description is derived from the published 'Archaeological Inventory of County Cavan' (Dublin: Stationery Office, 1995). In certain instances the entries have been revised and updated in the light of recent research. Revised by: Michael Moore Date of revision: 27 July 2018 This monument is subject to a preservation order made under the National Monuments Acts 1930 to 2014 (PO no. 5/1971). Kirk, C. 2022a Our Drumlane Research Journey. The Spark: border counties local history review, 34, 41-2.

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