Archaeology 360: Monasterboice Monastic Site, Co. Louth

 


You come in through the site entrance into a graveyard that's still in active use - centuries-old cross-slabs standing shoulder to shoulder with modern headstones - and the first thing that stops you is Muiredach's Cross, reckoned by most to be the finest high cross in Ireland. Walk its east face and you're looking at Old Testament scenes (Adam and Eve, David and Goliath among them); round to the west face and it switches to the New Testament, the Crucifixion and a Last Judgement, the whole thing carved - so the theory goes - by the same mason responsible for the Cross of the Scriptures at Clonmacnoise, with a pair of cats playing at the base of the shaft for good measure. It's named for Muiredach, an abbot who died in the early 920s (923 or 924, depending which source you trust), and a scaled reproduction of this exact cross stands in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Circle the South Church - its north side, then in through the door, then back out the west - and you're walking through a building rebuilt in phases across the 11th, 12th and 15th centuries, with older carved shrine stones built right into its west wall. From there it's on to the Round Tower, somewhere around 28-30 metres tall depending on who's measuring and missing its conical cap entirely: these towers doubled as strongrooms in a raid, and this one's own store of books and treasures burned in a fire around 1097-98. The West Cross, or Tall Cross, is the real giant of the three, at 6.5 metres the tallest high cross in Ireland and, face for face, the most heavily carved, front and back both crowded with biblical scenes. Into the North Church next - which once, it's said, held the skull of the monastery's founder, Saint Buithe (or Boetius, if you prefer his Latin name), until it was stolen sometime in the 16th century - and back out past its east end to the North Cross, weathered enough by comparison that its carvings are hard to make out, standing beside a sundial worn smooth by roughly a thousand years of use, which still, more or less, tells the time.


You can view this 360-degree video on an ordinary browser or on the dedicated YouTube app for your smartphone. However, for best results we recommend the more immersive experience that comes with an Oculus/Google Cardboard headset. Please feel free to Like and Share the video and Subscribe to the Archaeology 360 channel. If you’re feeling peculiarly generous and wish to help purchase snacks to sustain the Chapples Minor in the field, please drop something in the Tip Jar on this page.

References

Wikipedia contributors, 'Monasterboice', Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monasterboice


'Monasterboice Monastic Site', Heritage Ireland, https://heritageireland.ie/unguided-sites/monasterboice-monastic-site/


'Monasterboice: History, High Crosses + 2026 Info', The Irish Road Trip, https://www.theirishroadtrip.com/monasterboice/



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