J Roy Soc Antiq Ir 132

Study looking at aspects of the medieval parish churches of County Meath. The first section considers the view that the medieval parish system and the church buildings were primarily a result of Anglo-Norman sub-infeudation and attempts to provide a more nuanced understanding of this process. The author then discusses the architecture of the surviving churches, emphasising window tracery as a dating criterion. The proportional systems underlying many of the buildings are considered in detail. Some of the documentary material describing the buildings' use in the later middle ages is discussed, as is the impact of the reformation. Finally the later fate of the churches is traced, and it is argued that many more remained in use down to the early-nineteenth century than is commonly realised.

Plans and descriptions are provided of a complex of prehistoric monuments at Banagher, County Cavan. The complex includes a ruined passage tomb encompassed by a stone circle and at which there is a stone decorated with passage tomb art; a second stone circle; an embanked enclosure, and two barrows. Aspects of the siting, morphology, and relationships of the monuments are discussed.

Article on the evidence provided by an inscription on the shaft of a cross at Toureen Peacaun, County Tipperary, on the origins of the geometric-display lettering found especially in Irish and Northumbrian Gospel books of the eighth and ninth centuries.

Description and discussion of two carved slabs found in the graveyard at Taney, near Dundrum, where they appear to have been reused as headstones. The links between their decoration and that of the series known as Rathdown slabs, and the association of the saltire cross motif in particular with Hiberno-Norse artistic traditions, is considered.

Description of a fragment of a rotary quern discovered during assessment of a church site at Church Hill, County Offaly.