This essay considers the position of Irish medieval buildings in the
early years of the twentieth century. Focusing on the treatment of the
oratory of St. Lua at Killaloe, it examines the ways in which the ruins
of the medieval past were used to signify a range of political,
religious and cultural ideas and attitudes. The rising water levels
following the Shannon Scheme works (begun in 1925) meant that this stone
oratory was moved from its original position on Friar’s Island to the
grounds of St. Flannan’s Roman Catholic Church in 1929. The resulting
paper trail reflects the complex processes of decision-making within a
civil service in transition as the new Irish Free State calibrated its
position with regard to the past and the treatment of medieval ruins
throughout the countryside. The case study of St. Lua’s oratory is
considered here in the context of the nineteenth-century tradition of
scholarship on medieval buildings, the development of the idea of a
national Irish architecture during this period, and the impact of this
tradition on subsequent engagement with the buildings of the medieval
past.