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.)]

[Footnote 66: The _Ecclesiastical Architecture of Ireland_, anterior to
the Anglo-Saxon Invasion, comprising an Essay on the Round Towers of
Ireland, pp. 437, 435 and 430.]

[Footnote 67: "That these buildings (St. Columb's House at Kells and St.
Kevin's at Glendalough), which are so similar in most respects to each
other, are of a very early antiquity, can scarcely admit of doubt;
indeed, I see no reason to question their being of the times of the
celebrated ecclesiastics whose names they bear."--(Dr. Petrie's
_Ecclesiastical Architecture_, p. 430.) In his late edition of Adamnan's
_Life of St. Columba_, Dr. Reeves, when describing the Columbite
monasteries and churches founded in Ireland, speaks (p. 278) of Kells as
"having become the chief seat of the Columbian monks" shortly after the
commencement of the ninth century. Among the indications of the ancient
importance of the place which still remain, he enumerates the fine old
Round Tower of Kells, its three ancient large sculptured crosses, the
"curious oratory called St. Columbkille's House," and its great literary
monument now preserved in Trinity College, Dublin--namely, the _Book of
Kells_. He quotes the old Irish _Life of St. Columba_, followed by
O'Donnell, to show that it is there stated that the saint himself
"marked out the city of Kells in extent as it now is, and blessed it;"
b