The oldest church in Ardmore was almost certainly timber-built and may well have been one of the earliest Christian churches in Ireland. A good case can be made that St. Declan was a pre-Patrician bishop ie. arrived in Ireland before St. Patrick. Timber churches were probably built in Ardmore until the 700s and 800s from which time onwards stone churches were built. Ardmore cathedral contains the remains of an early stone church and the adjacent Beannacháin is a shrine chapel to St. Declan containing what could well be the 5th century AD grave of the saint.
Local historian Tommy Mooney tells us a team of German students cleaned up the interior of the cathedral in 1965/6.
Interpretations based on the excellent Corpus of Romanesque Sculpture of Britain and Ireland entry for Ardmore
A visit by Simon Dowling to Ardmore graveyard in 2015 resulted in a remarkable discovery. A small, plain headstone turned out to be highly decorated but difficult to read. Simon is a pioneering digital heritage recorder and his photogrammetrical model of the stone showed five figures on the back of the stone and four on the front face.
