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Culture, People and Places

Christianity Arrives

Christianity came to Ireland with the arrival of St Patrick at Saul in 432AD, and in his wake, a cluster of great monasteries grew up and flourished around the Lough. The best preserved of these, Nendrum on Mahee Island, founded by Saint Mo-choí, still retains an aura of sanctity. With its triple enclosure walls, its church and round tower, Nendrum is probably the best surviving example of what an early Irish monastery looked like.

A new chapter in the archaeology of Nendrum opened in 1999 with the discovery of the monastic tide mills on the nearby shore. With the absence of freshwater streams on the island, the monks turned to tidal power for their corn mill. The first mill has been dated to AD 619 and is at the moment the earliest known tide mill anywhere in the world.

Greyabbey Bay
This area was systematically ‘farmed’ as a foreshore fishery by the Cistercian monks of Greyabbey from the 13th to the 16th century and is criss-crossed by stone (and wooden) ‘V’ shaped fish traps which trapped fish as the tide ebbed out. Other features include a well preserved Neolithic logboat buried in the sand; and kelp grids from the thriving kelp industry of the 18th and early 19th centuries. Kelp (the soda ash produced from burning seaweed) was in great demand then for bleaching linen, and manufacturing glass and soap. The seaweed was dried and burned in stone kilns, and the fires from these would have been seen all around the Lough in summer. This was a profitable business, so to extend the growing zone; stones were laid in grids to promote the growth of the seaweed, which was harvested on a rotational basis.

Picture courtesy of Northern Ireland Environment Agency.