From Mellifont Abbey a short distance away is Monasterboice, our next location!
This place was a church or abbey or something until Mellifont came along. But mostly it’s known for it’s high crosses!
Monasterboice!
This round tower was built as a watchtower to lookout for vikings, and other monasteries!
A guide in Dublin told us that during viking times everyone blamed everything on the vikings, whether it made sense or not. And also a lot of the time it was actually other monasteries raiding each other.
This is what’s left of one of the two churches that were here until the moved to Mellifont.
There’s an extensive graveyard, with lots of fancy crosses.
But this high cross isn’t actually a gravestone, which I didn’t know before.
They were used as teaching aids, the carvings telling biblical stories.
I’m not sure if this is a grave marker, or a story to be honest. Probably a grave marker.
These too.
It I remember right, this is the oldest cross there. I’m pretty sure it’s this one because there was a short gate around it and it was on the edge of the property and it was difficult to take a good picture with the sun.
And then we moved on!
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