We use cookies to improve your experience, some are essential for the operation of this site.

St Corbmac, Inishmaine

Location
(53°36′3″N, 9°17′59″W)
Inishmaine
M 14 62
pre-1974 traditional (Republic of Ireland) Mayo
now Mayo
  • Hazel Gardiner

Please use this link to cite this page - https://www.crsbi.ac.uk/view-item?i=14572.

Find out how to cite the CRSBI website here.

Description

A mainly early 13thc. church, on the shores of Lough Mask, T-plan, now in ruins, with nave, chancel and N and S chambers accessible from the chancel. (nave w. 6.4 m x l. 12.49 m; chancel w. 4.65 m x l. 6.02 m) The chambers were added after the first building campaign. (S chamber w. 3.86 m x l. 5.03 m, N chamber w. 3.81 m x l. 5.03 m) . A further small chamber (w. 1.35 m) is attached to the W wall of the S chamber and the S wall of the nave. There is a doorway in the N wall of the nave, plain with inclined jambs and a massive lintel. There are also a number of large ashlar blocks in the N wall of the nave, and two arcuated lintels (reset in the exterior S wall of the nave and interior S wall of the N transept). These and the doorway may provide evidence for an earlier structure. 13thc. sculpture survives on the chancel arch, on the double window on the gabled E wall of the chancel, and on the L label stop of a window in the S wall of the nave (only part of the masonry of the window survives). There is a plain window, with arcuated lintel, on the E wall of the N transept, which also has a gabled N wall.

History

In the 7thc. an abbey is said to have been founded at Inishmaine by St Corbmac (Acta Sanctorum Hiberniae 751-6, as recorded in Gwynne and Hadcock, 38), and the Annals of the Four Masters and the Monasticum Hybernicum document 'Inismean' as a Benedictine cell. Maelisa Ua Conchobhair (O'Connor), the son of Toirdhelbhach Ua Conchobhair, King of Connaught, was prior at Inishmaine (d.1223/4).

After 1223 the abbey became a convent of Augustinian (Arroasian) nuns and sometime after this was subject to Kilcreevanty, which became the head Arroasian house in Connaught.

Aid, the son of Ruaidri Ua Conchobhair, and Richard de Burgo, burned Inishmaine in 1227 according to the Annals of the Four Masters and Annals of Connaught.

An inquisition of 1587 records a ruined church, among other features, at this site.

Features

Exterior Features

Windows

Interior Features

Arches

Chancel arch/Apse arches
Comments/Opinions

Healy states that the N wall of the nave incorporates 'a portion of the wall of the primitive abbey with its own peculiar doorway formed of large stones with flat lintel and inclining jambs' which he regards as a feature of 5thc. - 7thc churches. Cochrane (as quoted by Healy) suggests that the doorway would originally have been found in the W wall of the early church. Although acknowledging the early character of the doorway, Champneys dismisses the doorway as an example of Irish conservatism and dates the building 'not earlier than the last years of the 12thc.' The doorway may however have been reused from an earlier church on this site and the arcuated stones and large blocks of masonry in the N nave walls also argue for an earlier structure.

Cochrane (in Healy) notes that the small chamber adjoining the nave and S chamber was accessible from an upper storey of the S chamber. He suggests that the S chamber was used for residential purposes and the N chamber for ritual purposes or as a sacristy.

Some repairs were made to the church toward the end of the 19thc. An illustration of c.1850 from Wilde's Lough Corrib (reproduced in Healy) shows the building overgrown with ivy, and with a large gap in the wall where the N side of the chancel arch should be. The N doorway is in its present position. In Dunraven, published in 1877, a photograph of the chancel arch shows that the N side is still down (the date of the photograph is not given)

Numerous comparisons may be made between Inishmaine and other 'School of the West' churches, in both mouldings and decoration. For example the fighting beasts on the fourth order N capital of the chancel arch, with one biting the nose of the other may be compared with fighting dragons on the chancel arch at O'Heynes Church, Kilmacduagh in Galway and on the E window, of Clonfert Cathedral (Galway). The carving on the fourth order S capital of the chancel arch is very close in motif and execution to the exterior second order capital of the slype doorway at nearby Cong Abbey. Comparisons may also be made with the capitals of the Chapter House doorway at Ballintober Abbey, which lies about 10 miles N of Inishmaine. Carving in shallow relief, circular motifs containing triskeles and globular foliage forms with slender stems (perhaps an interpretation of stiff-leaf) occur at both sites. The bases and coursed orders of the chancel arch are also like those of the Ballintober doorway. The Ballintober doorway is very badly damaged so more than a general comparison is not possible. The work at Ballintober has been dated to between 1216 and 1225 (see Ballintober).

Kalkreuter compares the small panel on the exterior L of the double window, which depicts a horseman, with the N capital between bays 1 and 2 at Ballintober carved with confronting horsemen and suggests that the Ballintober capital may have been the inspiration for this.

Leask suggests a date of 1210-20 for Inishmaine. If the Chapter House doorway at Ballintober is by the same hand as the Inishmaine carvings it seems unlikely on stylistic grounds that the sculpture at Inishmaine would be much earlier, or much later, than that at Ballintober. If Ballintober was completed first, a date in the early 1220s could be appropriate for Inishmaine. Maelisa was Prior until his death in 1223 which implies that a church was in existence before this date.

Kalkreuter proposes that the church was rebuilt after being burned in 1227, but the architecture and sculptural evidence argue against this and it seems feasible that the burning need not have involved more than the destruction of the roof as Leask suggests.

Dimensions are taken from Healy.

Bibliography
M. Archdall, Monasticon Hibernicum, or, A history of the abbeys, priories, and other religious houses in Ireland: interspersed with memoirs of their several founders and benefactors, and of their abbots and other superiors, to the time of their final suppression, Dublin, 1786, 502.
A. Champneys, Irish Ecclesiastical Architecture, Dublin, 1910, 33, 106, 122, 124.
M. Killanin and M. Duignan, The Shell Guide to Ireland, London, 1962, 2nd ed. 1967, 86.
E. Dunraven, ed. M. Stokes, Notes on Irish Architecture, London, 1877.
A. Gwynne and R. N. Hadcock, Medieval Religious Houses in Ireland, London, 1971, 38, 318.
P. Harbison, Guide to the National and Historical Monuments of Ireland, Dublin, 1992, 248-9.
Rev. Dr. Healy 'Two Royal Abbeys by the Western Lakes: Cong and Inishmaine', The Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, Dublin, 1905, 2-9.
B. Kalkreuter, Boyle Abbey and the School of the West, Bray, 2001, 73.
H. Knox, Notes on the Early History of the Dioceses of Tuam, Killala, and Achonry, Dublin, 1904, 306.
H. G. Leask, Irish Churches and Monastic Buildings: Gothic Architecture to A.D. 1400, II, Dundalk, 1960 (1990), 66-8.
G. Petrie, The Ecclesiastical Architecture of Ireland, anterior to the Anglo-Norman invasion, comprising an Essay on the origin and uses of the Round Towers of Ireland, Dublin, 1845, 180.
R. Stalley, Cistercian Monasteries of Ireland, London and Newhaven, 1987,184-189.