What is recorded here

Altar in County Donegal is a small drystone platform built against a hidden rock ledge where priests celebrated Mass during Penal times while bishops and armies hunted them. A rowan tree still forces through the boulders beside it, and ordinary stones rest on its flat top like offerings left by people who understood that love must sometimes go underground. The altar does not announce itself. It waits for rain, shadow and memory to reveal what power tried to erase.

Located in the N of a graveyard (DG084-001002-), which is enclosed within the S half of an ecclesiastical enclosure (DG084-001001-). Not shown on the 1836 OS 6-inch map, but indicated as ‘Altar’ on the 1907 edition, this altar (Wth 1.05m; D 0.0.45m; H 0.63m) is roughly constructed of drystone walling. It is built against the NW side of a raised area (H c. 2m at N) of rock outcrop and boulders, which is largely obscured by sod and vegetation cover, with a rowan tree growing out of it. Three stone objects -a fragment of a quernstone, a cylindrical stone simply decorated around its circumference with grooves, and an undecorated cylindrical stone- rest on the flat slab that forms the top of the altar; another stone with a modern carving of a face was added in 2011. (Beglane et al. 2016, Appendix 2; Appendix 3). Mass was celebrated here during Penal times (Meehan 1997, 15). There is a penitential cairn (DG084-001005-) immediately to SE, and two others (DG084-001006-; DG084-001007-) c. 8m to SSW. Compiled by: Jane O'Shaughnessy Date of upload: 9 August 2017

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