It is from amongst these interesting remains that we have selected the subject of our prefixed illustration--the Church and Round Tower of Donaghmore, situated a little more than a mile from Navan, on the road to Slane.
This religious establishment, which was anciently called _Dumnach-mor muighe Echnach_, owes its origin to St Patrick, as will appear from the following passage translated from the life of the Irish apostle, attributed to St Evin:--
“While the man of God was baptising the people called Luaiguii, at a place where the church of Domnach-mor in the plain of Echnach stands at this day, he called to him his disciple Cassanus, and committed to him the care of the church recently erected there, preadmonishing him, and with prophetic mouth predicting that he might expect that to be the place of his resurrection; and that the church committed to his care would always remain diminutive in size and structure, but great and celebrated in honour and veneration. The event has proved this prophecy to be a true one, for St Cassanus’s relics are there to be seen in the highest veneration among the people, remarkable for great miracles, so that scarcely any of the visitors go away without recovering health, or receiving other gifts of grace sought for.”--Tr. Th. p. 130.
But though the existing ruins of the Church of Donaghmore sufficiently indicate it to have been a structure “diminutive in size,” its architectural features clearly prove that it is not the original church of St Patrick’s erection, but a re-edification of the thirteenth century, in the usual style of the parish churches erected by the Anglo-Norman settlers within the Pale. Neither can the Round Tower, though unquestionably a structure of much higher antiquity than the present church, be referred to the time of the Irish apostle, or perhaps to an earlier age than the ninth or tenth century. At all events, its erection cannot be ascribed to an earlier date than that of the Tower of the Church of Kells--a religious establishment founded by St Columbkille in the sixth century--as these towers so perfectly agree in architectural style and masonwork, that they appear to have been constructed by the same architects or builders.