Abbey — Strake

Located in the E half of a graveyard (MA085-013002-), roughly in the middle of the S side of the Clare Island, 250m N of the rocky shoreline. Clare Island Abbey is a National Monument (No. 97) in state guardianship. A full survey and historical assessment of the abbey and its extraordinary wall paintings can be found in: Conleth Manning, Paul Gosling and John Waddell (eds.) 2005 New Survey of Clare Island. Volume 4: The Abbey. And a detailed summary account (No. 148, p. 171-176) is included in the ‘catalogue of monuments’ in: Paul Gosling, Conleth Manning and John Waddell (eds.) New Survey of Clare Island Volume 5: The Archaeology. The summary description below is based on both these publications. Indicated on the 1840 and 1920 OS 6-inch maps as ‘Abbey’, and habitually referred to as such, this religious foundation did not in fact have the full status of an abbey, but was a ‘cell’ of the Cistercian abbey of Knockmoy (GA058-004001-), Co. Galway (Manning, in Manning et al. 2005, 7). Written documentation from this period of Clare Island’s history is scant, and the nature of the small religious community that existed here is uncertain. The abbey is strongly associated with the Uí Máille (O’Malley) family, Gaelic chiefs of the island, who played the role of patrons over several centuries, and used it as a burial place. It consists of a stone-built nave and chancel church, with a small, narrow domestic building attached to the N side of the chancel. It was built in three phases: The nave was the primary structure, most likely built in the early 13th century. This simple church remained relatively unchanged until the 15th century, when the more elaborate two-storey chancel was added, followed sometime later in the same century, by the addition of the two-storey north wing to the chancel (ibid. 22-25). The first floor chambers of the chancel and the N wing provided accommodation for the priest or monks who served at the church. The chancel contains two outstanding features: an ornate canopied wall tomb (MA085-013003-) and mural paintings. The nave (int. dims. 11.15m E-W; 5.8m N-S) is rectangular in plan, with the main doorway located in the W gable. This doorway has a segmental pointed head with a hollow chamfer and triangular stop chamfers at the base. A later doorway, towards the W end of the S wall, is now blocked up. There is a damaged window at the E end of the S wall. Two doorways, close together in the E half of the N wall, the easternmost of which retains its moulded chamfer surround, are both late inserts; they gave access to a building attached to the N side of the nave, of which there is now no trace. A roughly square-shaped stoup (Wth 0.21m), carved from serpentine, projects from the internal face of the N wall, towards its E end, probably inserted there by the Office of Public Works c. 1880. Carved in flat relief on the front (S face) are two stylised, four-legged animals (quadrupeds), back to back, with their heads at the upper corners and their back feet at the lower corners. The sides of the stoup each have a similar quadruped, with head at the upper corner, meeting the head of its mirror image on the front face of the stone. The chancel arch dominates the E wall of the nave, spanning almost its entire width. The bluntly pointed arch has four plain orders: The outer order is built of roughly cut voussoirs, but the three inner orders are of well-cut serpentine or soapstone, quarried locally. A small rectangular slot at the springing of the arch on each side of the outer order was designed to hold a rood screen. Tucked into the SE corner of the E wall of the nave, a doorway opens to mural stairs which lead to the upper storey of the chancel. The chancel is a tall, two-storey, tower-like structure. The ground floor (int. dims. 5.8m E-W; 4.05m N-S) is roofed by a barrel vault, and lit by a two-light window, with twin ogee heads and external hood moulding, in the E wall, and a single-light, ogee-headed window, in a deep embrasure, in the S wall. The walls and vaulted ceiling are embellished with wall paintings (described in more detail below). The original stone altar (H 1.1m), which stands beneath the E window, is faced with squared serpentine blocks, and the top (2.02m N-S; 0.67m E-W) is formed of four pieces of serpentine, moulded on the outer edges. There is a piscina immediately to S of the altar, set in the inner E corner of the deep window embrasure in the S wall, and a sedile is located to W of the window, roughly in the centre of the S wall. Immediately to W of the sedile is a secondary doorway, inserted to allow access from the chancel to the mural stairs. Two small carved stone human heads are visible in the S wall, one projecting from the wall between the doorway and the sedile, and the other in the E jamb of the sedile. The elaborate canopied wall tomb (MA085-013003-) is set centrally in the N wall. There was originally an aumbry or recess immediately to E of the tomb, but this was partly destroyed by a doorway, which was later inserted into the wall to provide direct access from the chancel to the N wing. This doorway caused structural weakness to the tomb canopy, and was blocked up in recent years as a conservation measure. A 17th-century armorial plaque (MA085-013011-), bearing the O'Malley coat of arms, is set in the wall to W of the tomb. The straight mural stairs (Wth 0.54m) in the S chancel wall lead to the first floor chamber (6.15m E-W; 4.8m N-S), which is lit by a cusped, ogee-headed window in the E wall and two plainer windows, one at the E end of the N wall and one at the W end of the S wall. A plain opening in the centre of the W wall looks out into the roof space of the nave. It is flanked to the S by a wall cupboard, and to N by a narrow doorway which allowed access to the parapets of the nave. A tiny doorway in the N wall opens onto a short cramped flight of stairs leading down to the first floor of the N wing, which is at a lower level. The N wing, a narrow, two-storey building, is attached to the N wall of the chancel, with its E wall in line with the E wall of the chancel. It is more ruinous than the nave and chancel, and much of the N wall and the N end of the E wall is modern rebuild. As well as direct access from the chancel, there was access from outside. This was through a doorway at the S end of the W wall, which opens into a tiny lobby in the thickness of the wall. From the lobby an inner doorway opens into the ground floor. The latter doorway has a hanging eye and a spud stone on the S side, which held a wooden door, and on the N side a projecting stone with a hole for a bolt. The ground floor (int. dims. 5.75m N-S; 2.55m E-W) appears to have served as a sacristy. It was roofed with a stone vault, now largely collapsed. The tiny entrance lobby also gives direct access to narrow, straight mural stairs (Wth 0.56m) leading to the first floor, but little now remains of that level; it was lit by a two-light, plainly chamfered window, with a serpentine sill, in the E wall, and furnished with a latrine, as evidenced by a gardrobe shute in the N end of the W wall. The chancel wall paintings, which had been subject to severe damage and loss over several centuries, were a focus of a major conservation project between 1990-2000 (Morton and Oldenburg 2005, 47-60; 61-95; Morton 2005, 97-121). The project revealed two phases of paintings, both 15th-century in date: the first scheme was plastered over some decades after it was painted, and a second scheme of paintings applied. The designs were first lightly incised in outline on plaster, and then painted in using a colour palate of yellow, red, white and black. Very little survives of the Phase 1 paintings: The main images include a mounted Gaelic soldier or chief sporting a conical helmet and a raised spear, visible on the southern wall above the doorway to the stairs, and a large hound chasing a graceful deer on the eastern half of the northern wall. The canop