doorway, and there are small square-headed windows on each story, and four apertures for bells at the top, exactly like the turret of St. Kevin's, only considerably larger: it has lost the roof.
The house which comes the nearest to this in apparent antiquity, is St. Columbkill's House, or rather St. Colomb's Cell, at Kells, co. Meath. This is another small oblong house, with very thick walls of rough stone, of various sizes and shapes, merely split, not cut. Some of the stones are three or four feet long, others smaller, all deeply bedded in mortar, with very wide joints. It has a stone roof, and a vault under it, with a space between the top of the vault and the outer roof, which is divided by two cross walls into three cells, with round-headed doorways from one to the other. These cells do not appear to have been large enough for habitation, and the only entrance to them was through a small square hole in the wall, more like a chimney-shaft than anything else. The original entrance to the house was of the early Irish form called Cyclopean at the west end, which is now walled up, and another cut through the wall on the south side; there is a fireplace in the south wall; the windows are small, with triangular heads; their position and other indications show that there was a wooden floor under the vault; there have indeed been two floors, hut whether both were original may be doubtful; the exterior is so much hid by ivy that the position of the windows cannot be seen. The round tower near this house looks old, but not so early as the house; the doorway and window-frames are of cut stone; the doorway-frame has a broad flat projection, and what appear to have been two heads standing out from the face of it. The stone here is not so hard as in other places, and is a good deal weather-worn; the masonry of the tower is rubble.
The next building of importance in the order of time is the Chapel of Cormac MacCarthy, King of Munster, on the Hock of Cashel, which has been clearly shown by Dr. Petrie in his learned and valuable work on the Hound Towers of Ireland, pp. 285, 286, to have been consecrated A.D. 1134, with great pomp, as recorded in the Irish annals. Dr. Petrie has quoted passages from, and given references to, several distinct authorities, all bearing testimony to the same point. This chapel is a small oblong building, with a chancel not quite so wide as the nave; it is vaulted, and ornamented in the richest style of Norman sculpture both within and without; it is said, probably with reason, to be the most richly ornamented building of its kind in Ireland. On each side, and at the junction of the nave and chancel, is a tall square tower, and at a short distance from it a round belfry-tower about the same height as the square towers, and
