Ecclesiastical site, Coolineagh, Co. Cork
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Ecclesiastical Sites
A modern road cuts straight through the middle of what was once a carefully bounded sacred enclosure, and most drivers passing Aghabulloge graveyard in Coolineagh, Co. Cork, would have no reason to suspect they were bisecting an early medieval ecclesiastical site of considerable age.
The enclosure, roughly oval in shape and measuring approximately 160 metres east to west and 130 metres north to south, once enclosed the entire complex. Only fragments of its boundary survive above ground: a short length of stone-faced earthen bank to the north-west of the road, still standing to about 1.7 metres in height, is the clearest remnant. Elsewhere the line of the enclosure is suggested by subtler traces, a slight curving rise east of the graveyard wall, a modest scarp to the south-west, and the alignment of garden boundaries to the south, all of which follow the curve of what was once a substantial enclosing boundary.
The site is associated with St. Eloang, also known as Olan, and was identified by Hurley in 1980 as an important early ecclesiastical foundation connected to his cult. Such enclosed ecclesiastical sites, sometimes called cashels or enclosures depending on their construction, were characteristic of early Christian Ireland, functioning as monastic or church settlements demarcated from the surrounding landscape by a bank or wall. Two ogham stones, an early medieval form of inscription using a series of notches and strokes along a central line to represent letters, have been found within the graveyard, lending further weight to the site's antiquity. A saint's stone, originally located in a field to the north of the graveyard, has since been moved inside the graveyard boundary for safekeeping. St Olan's well lies approximately 450 metres to the north-east, a further element in the broader devotional geography clustered around this figure.