Note 145 — Chapter VIII · FOUNDATION OF ARMAGH AND ECCLESIASTICAL ORGANISATION

The dimensions of these houses are given, Vit. Trip. p. 226:—“27 feet in the Great House, 17 feet in the kitchen, 7 feet in the oratory [aregal, supposed to be derived from oraculum]; and it was thus that he used always to found the congbala” [i.e. the sacred enclosures, or cloisters]. If these houses were circular, the numbers represent the diameters. For the topography of Armagh see the paper of Reeves, The Ancient Churches of Armagh (Lusk, 1860), with a plan. The locality of the first settlement, ubi nunc est Fertae martyrum, “the grave of the relics” (Muirchu, 290), he fixes, by means of the monastery of Temple-fertagh, which existed at the beginning of the seventeenth century, to the land south of Scotch St., near Scotch St. river (p. 10).