Qualla: St Doulagh's Church

St Doulagh's Church: Introduction

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit NateBergin, CC BY 4.0. There is a low window on the south wall of St Doulagh's Church where, tradition says, the hermit placed his plate every morning in the hope that someone would leave him food. The man himself lived in a cell attached to the church and rarely emerged. We do not know what he looked like, what he ate, or exactly when he lived - all we know is that he was here in the early seventh century, and that he was an anchorite, and that the church that took his name and the holy well beside it are still in active Christian use fourteen hundred years later. St Doulagh's is the oldest stone-roofed church still in use in Ireland.

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Image: NateBergin | CC BY 4.0

St Doulagh's Church: The Hermit on the Hill

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Zenit, CC BY-SA 3.0. Very little is known of Doulagh. The Martyrology of Donegal places him in the lineage of Conmac son of Fergus; the Martyrology of Oengus, written in the ninth century, calls his church Duilech Cain Clochair - 'fair Duilech of Clochar.' The 1859 scholar William Reeves, working bac...

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Image: Zenit | CC BY-SA 3.0

St Doulagh's Church: Stone Roof, Stone Bones

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Robin Synnott, CC BY-SA 4.0. The main historic building is 48 feet by 18 feet - a stone box with a wedge-shaped double roof of rough stone, the space between the two roof skins still usable. Halfway along the roof a small stone tower rises. The construction technique is Irish - heavy walls, stone vaulted cei...

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Image: Robin Synnott | CC BY-SA 4.0

St Doulagh's Church: Ireland's Only Detached Baptistry

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Karora, CC0. A few yards from the church, in a sunken stone enclosure, stands a low octagonal building over the spring known as St Doulagh's Well. It is believed to be a baptistry - the only freestanding example of one anywhere in Ireland. Beside it sits an open-air pool with stone seating, v...

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Image: Karora | CC0

St Doulagh's Church: Ruin, Rebuild, Repeat

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit The original uploader was Joyous! at English Wikipedia.. Improved by Ww2censor, CC BY-SA 3.0. The church was already old when the Norman conquest reached the Pale. In 1406 the Archbishop of Armagh granted indulgences to anyone who visited St Doulagh's, confessed to the resident chaplain Eustace Roche, and paid a donation - the money probably funded the tower house that st...

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Image: The original uploader was Joyous! at English Wikipedia.. Improved by Ww2censor | CC BY-SA 3.0

St Doulagh's Church: Still in Use

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Cg.wiki, CC BY-SA 4.0. St Doulagh's is today part of the Church of Ireland 'United Parishes of Malahide, Portmarnock and St Doulagh's.' Services are still held. The graveyard outside has no published excavations to date its earliest graves, though the curved ditch to the north of the site - probably da...

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Image: Cg.wiki | CC BY-SA 4.0