Ecclesiastical site, Linns, Co. Louth

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Ecclesiastical Sites

Ecclesiastical site, Linns, Co. Louth

On a coastal ridge in County Louth, an early medieval ecclesiastical site has effectively vanished.

No walls, no carved stones, no earthworks remain above ground, yet the land here is thought to conceal the remnants of a foundation going back to the seventh century, its existence confirmed only by the accidental evidence of a plough.

The site at Linns is traditionally associated with St Colman, one of the many early Irish saints whose monastic or church foundations dotted the coastline of Louth during the early medieval period. The county was unusually dense with such activity, lying as it does along the corridor between Ulster and Leinster and close to important sea routes. At some point during agricultural work, ploughing turned up paving, the kind of stone surface that would have formed a path, floor, or yard within an ecclesiastical enclosure. That single find is essentially all that confirms something was ever here. The reference in the County Louth Archaeological Journal from 1943 suggests the site had already been noted by local antiquarians, though even then it seems nothing was visible at ground level.

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