What is recorded here

Donagh Church in Carndonagh wears a fifteenth-century door inside an eighteenth-century building. The reuse suggests that the older doorway was carried through change rather than discarded, while the carved stone beside it preserves a wheeled cross and shadowy figures from a still earlier church. Together they show that Donagh has kept layer after layer of worship alive in the same ground.

The Carndonagh complex (National Monument number 271) is the site of one of the main early ecclesiastical centres in Donegal. It consists of a modern graveyard (DG011-035007-) surrounding the 18th century Church of Ireland church. The W entrance of the church consists of a reused 15th-century door with pointed head (DG011-035002-). The jambs are stop-chamfered with a central right-angled groove, suggestive of two orders. Each of the tapering stops of the chamfered hood-mould terminates in a small moulded band, now defaced, from which a double vine leaf and single vine bunch enrichment springs. The door has been heightened by the insertion, in the jambs, of two dressed blocks below the hood-mould stops, and two others below the chamfer stops. To the S of this doorway and lying against the church wall is a small carved stone (DG011-035003-). On the face of this is a central wheeled cross, three or four figures on the left and interlacing on the right. It is, presumably, a lintel from an earlier church (DG011-035001-). The above description was derived from the 'Archaeological Survey of County Donegal. A description of the field antiquities of the County from the Mesolithic Period to the 17th century.' Compiled by: Brian Lacey with Eamon Cody, Claire Cotter, Judy Cuppage, Noel Dunne, Vincent Hurley, Celie O'Rahilly, Paul Walsh and Seán Ó Nualláin (Lifford: Donegal County Council, 1983). In certain instances the entries have been revised and updated. Date of upload/revision: 20 August 2012

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