Devenish Island Fermanagh
Devenish Island in Lower Lough Erne in County Fermanagh is one of the finest and most completely preserved early Christian monastic sites in Ireland, an island accessible by ferry from Trory Point whose combination of a twelfth-century round tower of exceptional quality, an Augustinian abbey of the same period, an earlier oratory and an elaborate high cross creates one of the most complete assemblages of early medieval ecclesiastical architecture available at any Irish island monastic site. The setting on the island in the beautiful landscape of Lough Erne adds considerable atmospheric quality to the visit.
The round tower at Devenish, approximately 25 metres high and complete to its conical cap, is one of the finest and most completely preserved in Ireland, its stone staircase still intact within the tower and the carved decorative band that encircles the tower below the cap level providing one of the most elaborate examples of decorative stonework on any Irish round tower. The tower was built in the twelfth century on a monastery site traditionally founded by St Molaise in the sixth century, and the combination of the early medieval foundation and the twelfth-century architectural elaboration reflects the prosperity of Devenish as one of the most important monasteries in Ulster.
The Augustinian abbey ruins, including the substantial remains of the church, the cloister and the residential buildings, provide the later medieval dimension to a site whose full span of ecclesiastical use from the sixth to the sixteenth century can be traced through the surviving architecture.