Tullynakill Church, Co. Down 3D
< Back to Main Post < Table of Contents
Posts
Sketrick Castle, Co. Down
< 3D Images < Table of Contents Once we finished thanking the landowner at Ringhaddy it was time to be on our way again. This time we had set our sights on Sketrick Castle. I’ll be honest and admit that after nearly twenty years living in Belfast I should have managed to get to see this site before now. When standing at Nendrum monastic site, I’ve certainly wanted to – it’s barely over 1km away … as the crow flies … however, as the crow drives, it’s nearly a half-our over back roads. Inevitably, we put it off saying ‘Next time! … Definitely next time!’ Well … it took a while, but this is the time! Sketrick is today the shattered remnant of a large tower house and bawn wall. The earliest mention of the site is in the Annals of the Four Masters, who note that the castle of ‘Sgathdeirge’ was captured by Henry O’Neill in 1470. This has led to the reasonable assumption that the building dates to approximately the middle of the 15th century. However, more recent re...
Ringhaddy Church, Co. Down
< 3D Images < Table of Contents In the last instalment of this series, I wrote about getting to see Ringhaddy Castle and simultaneously giving a little of its history and the job we had in getting to see it. We then turned our attention to the next field. There, on the summit of a small drumlin, lies Ringhaddy Church. While the Castle is in gentle shade, sheltering at the bottom of the hill, the Church stands in isolation without shelter-giving trees. The church is a simple, rectangular structure without any surviving dressed stone. The doorways in the north and south walls have holes in the jambs for the insertion of draw-bars, to secure the property. There are, apparently, two recessed cupboards (an aumbry and a piscina) near the east end of the church. However, as can be seen from the accompanying photographs, the ground inside the rusting wire fence is heavily overgrown with nettles and thistles. While I was tempted to brave the condition for myself, I didn’t fa...
Thanks for reading! | The Top 10 posts of 2017
Over the course of 2017 I’ve published some 63 posts of varying kinds, that garnered just under 70,000 views. As the year is drawing to a close, I just wanted to thank everyone who has read, shared, and (hopefully) enjoyed some of the content along the way. For those who missed out and would like to catch up, here are the Top 10 posts from 2017, plus a final, end-of-year plug for two posts that I really enjoyed writing that, I think, should have been a bit more widely read than they were. Again, my thanks for reading in 2017 … I’m already working on a large number of posts for 2018, so I hope to catch your interest with some of those too! 10) Glendalough: St Saviour's Priory 9) Ain't talkin', justwalkin'. Carrying a dead man's shield 8) Bronze Age burials at The Mound of the Hostages, Tara 7) Spiral staircase. National Museum of Ireland, Dublin 6) Three Sides Live |Professor Etienne Rynne Lectures | October 1994 | Part III 5) D...
