Dungiven Priory, Co Derry±London
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< 3D images | O’Cahan Tomb >
During the spring of last year (April 2014) I was coming
home from a work engagement in West Ulster. The early evening was bright, the
skies were blue, the weather was just lovely – hardly a breath of wind in the
air. I was contemplating that the next town on my drive would be Dungiven.
It then struck me that in all my time as a professional archaeologist, I’d
never stopped to see Dungiven Priory. At one time my work would frequently take
me out this direction, but I was always in too much of a rush to get there in
the morning, or get home at night, to stop. Confirming in my head that I didn’t
need to be back at any specific time, I took the turning onto Priory Lane (map).
After only a short distance Priory Lane stops being a lane and becomes instead
a rather overgrown farmer’s track. There didn’t seem to be much space for
parking here, so, with growing trepidation, I carried on down the track. It’s
not a particularly well cared for stretch of road and has grass growing up the
centre, and briars gently tapping off the wing mirrors as I went along.
Thankfully, there was a very small parking area at the end – sufficient to turn
only one car, but it was enough! I’m just including this as a word of warning
if you visit the place yourself and are, like me, not particularly adept
terrible at reversing along narrow lanes!
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| The North wall of the Nave |
There is believed to have been an Early Christian
monastery on this site, high above the river Roe, associated with St
Nechtán (d. 679). However, even if true, no trace of this survives today. The earliest visible remains today are associated with the 12th century priory of Augustinian Canons. Of
the standing structures, the nave is the oldest, dating to the early- to mid-12th
century. The chancel is slightly later, dating to the 13th century. In the period after the Dissolution of the Monasteries, the site – long associated with the ruling O’Cahan/Ó
Catháin clan – was reused as one of their castles.
This was probably in the tower constructed at the western end of the church,
which collapsed in 1784. In 1602 the site was garrisoned by Elizabethan forces and by 1611, following the conclusion of the Nine Years’ War,
the lands and buildings passed to Sir Edward Doddington, who created a
house and bawn on the site. This appears to have become derelict and burnt down by the end of
the 17th century. By the 20th century little
evidence of the house survived above ground, though excavations in the 1980s
revealed some of the foundations.
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| The graveyard with the church buildings in the distance |
By far the finest piece on the site is the tomb,
reputedly, of Cooey-na-gall (‘Terror of the Foreigners’), the local O'Cahan Chief,
who died in 1385. The tomb is built against the south wall of the chancel and
shows a figure in effigy below an open work tracery based on five roundels
within a gothic, pointed arch. The bench on which he lies is decorated with six
arched niches, each with a figure thought to represent a Scottish Gallowglass mercenary.
However, it is also argued that the style of the tomb is of the late 15th century
and is likely to be the work of a western Scottish sculptor. In this case, the
tomb may belong to a later Chief, Aibhne O'Cahan, who was murdered in 1492. Whoever
the tomb was commissioned for (and I make no pretense at being an expert in this form of monument or historical period), it is considered by many to be the very best example from this period in
west Ulster – a true masterpiece. What I did not know, as I made my way towards
the Priory was that to provide security and shelter for this tomb, the chancel
has been reroofed and is not open to visitors without a key. For this reason,
my photographs – taken through the bars of the grille – were less than adequate
(the best of them is below). As luck would have it, a few days later I was
talking to a Facebook friend, Mr Ed Feeny. He said that he was planning to
visit Northern Ireland later in the year and wanted to know if there was
anything off the beaten track in that part of Ulster that was worth exploring. Still
being on some form of natural high from my visit to Dungiven, the Priory was the
first thing I told him to go see, but I added the warning about parking that I
mentioned above, along with the disappointment at not being able to get as
close as I’d have killed to the O’Cahan tomb. I could hear the chuckle in his
reply when he said that he’d visited the site on a previous trip and had even
gotten inside the chancel in the company of a guide. With no small hesitation,
I mentioned that I was (eventually) hoping to do a blog post on the site and
wondered if he’d taken any decent photographs of the tomb that I might be able
to use. In an act of huge generosity, he has given me permission to reproduce a
selection of his excellent images. I thought they were so lovely, they should
have their own blog post (here)!
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| The graveyard |
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| The lancet windows in the east gable |
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| The O’Cahan tomb, viewed through the grille |
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| The Nave looking towards the chancel arch and reroofed chancel |
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| Foundations of Sir Edward Doddington’s house uncovered in the 1980s |
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| Panoramic overview of Doddington’s house & the church buildings |
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| The Priory buildings from the north-west |
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| The graveyard from the top of the hill, looking towards the church buildings |
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| Panoramic overview of the graveyard and buildings, looking towards Dungiven Castle and town |
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| Decorated portion of a graveslab in the graveyard |
As always, I hope that readers of this blog enjoy
the photos, and that they act as a little inspiration to come see Northern
Ireland in person and sample some of these wonderful sites!
< 3D images | O’Cahan Tomb >
Resources:
NI Sites &
Monuments Record contains some original excavation drawings, finds
illustrations, etc.
Introduction
to a QUB Dissertation on the site
References:
Boyle, E. M. F.-G. 1903 The castle and bawn of Dungiven.
Ulster Journal of Archaeology 9, 2nd
Series, 127-130.
Brannon, N. F. 1988 ‘A lost 17th-century house
recovered: Dungiven, Co. Londonderry’ in Hamlin, A. & Lynn, C. Pieces of the past: archaeological
excavations by the Department of the Environment for Northern Ireland 1970
-1986. Belfast, 81-84.
Brannon, N. F. & Blades, B. S. 1980 ‘Dungiven Bawn re-edified’ Ulster Journal of Archaeology 43, 3rd
Series, 91-96.
Brannon, N. F. & Hamlin, A. 1986 Dungiven Priory & Bawn. Historic
Monuments & Buildings Branch, DOENI. Belfast
Davies, O. 1939 ‘Dungiven Priory’ Ulster Journal of Archaeology 2.2, 3rd
Series, 271-287.
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