Clone Church

Clone is a beautiful Romanesque church located approximately 2.25km south of Ferns town.

The Project

According to tradition the church is dedicated to Saint Aidan, who is also associated with the larger nearby ecclesiastical site of Ferns. The upstanding archaeological remains at Clone consist of a medieval church, as well as three cross-slabs, a sundial, two bullaun stones and a recently discovered piece of passage-tomb rock art. From 2019 to 2021 the Irish Heritage School undertook geophysical surveys and two seasons of community excavations at the site. These excavations revealed a multi-vallate monastic complex, one circuit of which dates from the early fifth century. The excavations were run as a public heritage initiative and incorporated an elongated educational program, including site tours, vlogging, blogging, children’s workshops etc.

Findings

The excavations and surveys confirmed the existence of an early medieval monastery at the site, revealing three sets of enclosing ditches, as well as ‘lesser’ features, such as furrows, postholes, hearth pits, etc. The monastery is delimited by an outer bivallate enclosure and inner enclosure, which is also potentially bivallate. These enclosures, measuring 200m, 130m and >45m respectively from outer to inner circuit, surround a third small oval-shaped ditch at the site and survived across the early to later medieval periods. The innermost oval enclosure was dated to the fifth to early sixth century, with available dating evidence for the main monastic enclosures indicating these ditches were backfilled in the seventh to ninth centuries; an exception to this was the outermost monastic ditch which was not finally backfilled until the eleventh to thirteenth century. This backfilling occurred after the construction of a stone lined entry close to the original early medieval monastic entrance. An intriguing, but erroneous, Neolithic date was also returned from the inner ditch of the outer monastic enclosure which could have a significance to known passage tomb art from Clone.

The excavations were undertaken within the context of a larger research project, entitled Discovering St. Aidan’s Monastery, a major project jointly developed by the IHS, WCC and the local community. The project also saw an international field school take place at St. Mary’s Abbey, in nearby Ferns, from 2022 to 2024. The results of this project, including the work at Clone, have already been published in detail by Four Courts Press in 2023 in Discovering Medieval Ferns, Co. Wexford. This publication, and much of the wider public heritage offerings of the Discovering St. Aidan’s Monastery project was funded as a part of the Rediscovering Ancient Connections – The Saints initiative, a cross-border arts and heritage project linking North Pembrokeshire and North Wexford.

References

  • Mandal, S. Potterton, M. and Shine, D. (eds) 2023a. Discovering Medieval Ferns, Co. Wexford. Four Court Press.
  • Elliott, I. 2019. Report on archaeogeophysical survey (consent 19R0238) at Clone td, Co. Wexford. Unpublished technical report prepared for the Irish Heritage School.
  • Elliott, I. 2022. Report on archaeogeophysical survey (consent 21R0219) at Clone td, Co. Wexford. Unpublished technical report prepared for the Irish Heritage School.
  • Shine, D., Lacey, B., Corlett, C., Elliott, I and Mandal, S. 2020. Clone, Ferns: a meadow of St Aidan? Archaeology Ireland, 34:4, 24–9.
  • Shine, D., Elliott, I., Lacey, B., Goodall-Byrne, L. and Mandal, S. 2023. Clone, Ferns: church, community and continuity. In Mandal, S. Potterton, M. and Shine, D. (eds). Discovering Medieval Ferns, Co. Wexford. Four Court Press, pp. 279-302.
  • Shine, D. and Mandal, S. 2024. Discovering St Aidan’s monastery: final archaeological excavation report (License no. 19E0766(ext.)). Unpublished technical report produced for the National Monuments Service.

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