Site: Nendrum

Name:Nendrum CISP No:NDRUM
Place:Nendrum Grid Ref:J 5240 6360 (IR)   Map
Parish:Island Mahee Stones:1
County:Down (An Dún) , Ireland Saint(s):none
Site Type:ecclesiastical

Site Notes

Down/1966, 292--294: `The evidence for an early foundation at Nendrum by Mochaoi is not very satisfactory, resting as it does on a legendaryn storyt in the Tripartite Life of St Patrick (written c. A.D. 900) about Mochaoi receiving a winged crozier from St Patrick. By the 11th century the tradition was crystallised in Annals and other writings that nendrum was a monastic establishment of Mochaoi where Finian of Movilla and Colmán of Dromore had received their early training in the 6th century. Though their writers no doubt drew upon some earlier matieral, none of our sources come closer than within four centuries of Mochaoi's alleged foundation. Up to now no objects recovered from the site need be considered earlier than the 7th or 8th centuries. ...

Little is knonw of the monastic community at Nendrum beyond the bare names of bishops or abbots. The material from the site is, however, more extensive than that from any other Irish monastic site, and the evidence from the small rectangular building on the W. brings us nearer to a monastic workshop of the 9th-10th century. The last recorded of the pre-Norman abbots was `burned in his own house' in 974, presumably a Viking raid, and the state of the site as found by Lawlor may have been the result of such a raid'.

CISP: The supposedly `runic' nature of the inscription found at Nendrum has been used to argue for a Viking presence on the site. However Hamlin/2001, ??, and Barnes/Hagland/Page/1997, 2 both argue against this inscription being runic, thereby removing the evidence for Vikings on the site.

References

Stones