Coristine’s Weblog

Your family history website was very interesting and helpful. I visited the Inishowen peninsula in NE County Donegal last summer to seek my own ancestors. They had nothing to do with the Clonca Church ruin, but I wanted to visit as many early sites as possible during my stay. The high cross at Clonca is very nicely carved and VERY high indeed, so I wanted to see it.

Clonca Church is interesting, but the current building is not 7th century. The church on the site is 17th century, although the lintel over the door is older, and, like many Irish churches, it was built on the site of an early ecclesiastical settlement. (And those, in turn, were invariably built on pagan holy sites, like springs and groves, so as to associate Christianity with the pagan beliefs of the locals and make acceptance of the the new religion easier for all.) The current church is a roofless ruin. As you walk inside, the carved limestone tombstone of your ancestor is attached to the lefthand wall at the far end, beside another, plainer tombstone.

Also see http://www.visitinishowen.com/tour/culdafftour.html for another description of the church, cross and tombstone. As the site indicates, the tombstone is not medieval. This website places it in the 16th century. It is so finely carved and well-preserved that I’m surprised it’s dated even that early, and the following website dates it later.

I found a website that shows an old black-and-white photo of the tombstone lying on the ground outside the church. (See http://www.movilleinishowen.com/history/moville_heritage/cloncha_culdaff.htm
and look at the photo on the right of a woman kneeling over the tombstone.) Because it’s tall, thin, and tapered like a shield, I believe it was meant to lie down over the grave, as it’s seen here, rather than to stand erect as a headstone. If vertical, it would be too easily tipped over, and since the intricate and beautiful carving goes all the way to the bottom, it could not have been driven into the ground for stability. As you might gather from the name of this website, Mayville in the old records is now called Moville, a townland on Lough Foyle on the the east side of the Inishown peninsula.

Thanks again for your website. I like to have details of what I’ve seen, and I could never have interpreted the Irish inscriptions without your information. And do visit Inishowen. There’s a driving route they call the
“Inishowen 100″ (miles), which outlines a circular tour of the peninsula. There are many interesting places and some quite spectacular scenery. Don’t miss the Knockamany Bens north of Malin Town. From carpark at the top there are spectaclular views of Trawbreaga Bay, the sand dunes of Lagg, Doagh Isle, the wide sand beach of the Back Strand, and Five Fingers Strand, where you can see several rocky headlands of northern County Donegal lined up, one after another.