What is recorded here

Both Chonais, an early monastic site in Carrowmore, still wears its cross-slab and buried double-wall enclosure beneath a modern road. The road cut the monastery in two, yet the stones keep their NW-SE alignment and the sword-and-circle mark on one slab's SW face. What the monks built there was not a display but a boundary: a place where the living, the dead and the road must all pass through the same line.

Carrowmore ecclesiastical complex has been identified with Both Chonais an early monastic site (Gwynn and Hadcock 1970, 30; Lacy et. al 1983, 248). The site consists of a series of monuments (DG011-049----/049010-) divided by a modern road, but obviously it originally formed part of a larger unit. On the W side of the road there is a rectangular enclosure of a burial ground (DG011-049001-). Near the SW corner of the enclosure two jamb-stones 1.5m apart, and at right-angles to the line of the wall, probably indicate an entrance. Just beyond the N side of this wall is a flat-topped boulder (DG011-049003-) which may be the base of a high cross. S of this dividing wall is a possible cross-inscribed slab (DG011-049004-). Near the NE end of the dividing wall is a stone slab (dims. H 0.91m x Wth 0.6m) and orientated NW-SE, as are all the crosses at the site and the cross-socket above (Lacy et. al. 1983, 248). This slab is decorated on its SW side by a device similar to a sword and beside it a circle, the bottom half of which is quartered. In 2012 the Bernician Studies Group carried out a magnetometer survey in the fields surrounding the high crosses (DG011-049005-/006-) at Carrowmore which revealed the sub-surface remains of a bi-vallate early Christian ecclesiastical enclosure (DG011-049----) (O'Brien and Adams 2014, 4). 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. Compiled by: Caimin O'Brien Date of revised upload: 4 March 2015

Probably dating to the early Christian period, the cross-slab may have served a liturgical or commemorative function within the monastic complex. Its presence suggests a continuity of sacred landscape use from Neolithic to Christian times.

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