Dysert O'Dea Monastic Site

About nine kilometres north of Ennis, near Corofin, a 12th-century church and round tower stand on the hermitage founded in the eighth century by St Tola, who died in the 730s. The church's fame is its Romanesque doorway, moved into the south wall when the building was reconstructed in 1683, whose outer arch is carved with nineteen human and animal heads. Beside the church the round tower, converted into a fortification in the 16th century, survives to about eighteen metres on one side and much less on the other. In the field to the east stands the 12th-century White Cross of Tola, its east face carved with Christ on the cross above a bishop, perhaps St Tola, with Daniel in the lions' den and Adam and Eve on the base; Michael O'Dea re-erected it in 1683, as an inscription records. Reviewers come for the carved heads of the doorway and admire a well-kept site. Dysert O'Dea Castle, three hundred metres north, is a separate attraction with its own ticket.