mately connected with the Saint.
Popularly it is supposed to be his grave and within it is a hollow space
scooped out, wherein it is said his ashes once reposed. It is highly
probable that tradition is quite correct as to the saint's grave, over
which the little church was erected in the century following Declan's
death. The oratory was furnished with a roof of slate by Bishop Mills in
1716.

"St. Declan's Stone" is a glacial boulder of very hard conglomerate which
lies on a rocky ledge of beach beneath the village of Ardmore. It
measures some 8' 6" x 4' 6" x 4' 0" and reposes upon two slightly jutting
points of the underlying metamorphic rock. Wonderful virtues are
attributed to St. Declan's Stone, which, on the occasion of the patronal
feast, is visited by hundreds of devotees who, to participate in its
healing efficacy and beneficence, crawl laboriously on face and hands
through the narrow space between the boulder and the underlying rock.
Near by, at foot of a new storm-wall, are two similar but somewhat
smaller boulders which, like their venerated and more famous neighbour,
were all wrenched originally by a glacier from their home in the Comeragh
Mountains twenty miles away.

"St. Declan's Well," beside some remains of a rather large and apparently
twelfth century church on the cliff, in the townland of Dysert is
diverted into a shallow basin in which pilgrims bathe feet and hands.
Set in some comparatively modern masonry over the well are a carved
crucifixion and other figures of apparently late mediaeval character.
Some malicious interference with this well led, nearly a hundred years
since, to much popular indignation and excitement.

The second "St. Declan's Stone" was a small, cross-inscribed jet-black
piece of slate or marble, approximately--2" or 3" x 1 1/2". Formerly it
seems to have had a small silver cross inset and was in great demand
locally as an amulet for cattle curing. It disappeared however, some
fifty years or so since, but very probably it could still be recovered in
Dungarvan.

Far the most striking of all the monuments at Ardmore is, of course, the
Round Tower which, in an excellent state of preservation, stands with its
conical cap of stone nearly a hundred feet high. Two remarkable, if not
unique, features of the tower are the series of sculptured corbels which
project between the floors on the inside, and the four projecting belts
or zones of masonry which divide the tower into st