Note 65 — ON AN OLD STONE-ROOFED CELL OR ORATORY IN THE ISLAND OF INCHCOLM.[16]

Though Roman houses, temples, and other buildings of stone and lime abounded in this country in the earlier centuries of the Christian era, yet the first Christian churches erected at Glastonbury in England, and at St. David's in Wales, were—according to the authority, at least, of William of Malmesbury and Giraldus Cambrensis—made of wattles. The first Christian church which is recorded as having been erected in Scotland, namely, the Candida Casa, reared at Whithern, towards the beginning of the fifth century, by St. Ninian, was constructed, as mentioned in a well-known passage of Bede, of stone, forming "ecclesiam insignem ... de lapide insolito Britonibus more."—(Historia Ecclesiast., lib. iii. cap. 4.) According to the Irish Annals, the three churches first erected by Palladius, in Ireland, about the year 420, were of wood, one of them being termed House of the Romans, "Teach-na-Romhan," but not apparently from its Roman mode of building.—(See Dr. O'Donovan's Annals of the Four Masters, vol. i. p. 129.) The church of Duleck, one of the earliest, if not the earliest, which St. Patrick erected in Ireland, and the first bishop of which, St. Cianan, died in the year 490, was built of stone, as its original name of Daimhllag (stone house) signifies; and the same word, damhliag or stone house, came subsequently to be applied as a generic term to the larger Irish churches.—(See Dr. Petrie's Ecclesiastical Architecture of Ireland, p. 142, with a quotation from an old Irish poem of the names of the three masons in the household of St. Patrick, who "made damhliags first in Erin.") When, in the year 652, Finan succeeded to the Bishopric of Lindisfarne, he built there a suitable Episcopal church, constructed of oak planks, and covered with reeds, "more Scotorum non de lapide, sed de robore secto totam composuit, atque arundine texit."—(Bede's Hist. Eccl., lib. iii. cap. 25.) When St. Cuthbert erected his anchorite retreat on the island of Farne he made it of two chambers, one an oratory, and the other for domestic purposes; and he finished the walls of these buildings by digging round and cutting away the natural soil within and without, forming the roof out of rough wood and straw, "de lignis informibus et fœno."—(Vita S. Cuthberti, cap. 17.) Planks or "tabulæ," also, were employed in building or reconstructing the walls of this oratory on Farne Island, as St. Ethelwald, Cuthbert's successor, finding hay and clay insufficient to fill up the openings that age made between its boards, obtained a calf's skin, and nailed it as a protection against the storms in that corner of the oratory, where, like his predecessor, he used to kneel or stand when praying.—(Ibid., cap. 46.) St. Godric's first rude hermitage at Finchale, on the Wear, was made of turf (vili cespite), and afterwards of rough wood and twigs (de lignis informibus et virgulis).—(See chaps 21 and 29 of his Life by Reginald.) On the construction, by wattles and wood, of some early Irish and Scoto-Irish monastic and saints' houses and oratories, as those of St. Wolloc, St. Columba, and St. Kevin, see Dr. Reeves' notes in his edition of the Life of St. Columba, pp. 106, 114, and 177. In some districts where wood was scarce, and stone abundant and easily worked, as in the west coast of Ireland, all ecclesiastical buildings were—like the far more ancient duns and forts in these parts—made principally or entirely of stone. But even in parts where wood was easily procured, oratories seem to have been sometimes, from an early period, built of stone. Thus, in the Tripartite Life of St. Patrick, the devout virgin Crumtherim is described as living in a stone-built oratory, "in cella sive lapideo inclusorio," in the vicinity of Armagh, as early as the fifth century.—(Colgan's Trias Thaumaturga, p. 163.) And, at the city of Armagh again, we have an incidental notice of a stone oratory in the eighth century; for, in the Ulster Annals, under the year 788, there is reported "Contentio in Ardmacae in qua jugulatur vir in hostio [ostio] Oratorii lapidei."—(Dr. O'Conor's Rerum Hibernicarum Scriptores, tom. iv. p. 113.) Dr. Petrie believes that all the churches at Armagh erected by St. Patrick and his immediate successors were built of stone, as well indeed as all the early abbey and cathedral churches throughout Ireland.—(Ecclesiastical Architecture, p. 159.)