ABSTRACT
The wooden houses and churches survive only in literature, in imagination, and in the influence which they appear to have exerted on some features in the design of the earliest extant buildings in stone. The plans are simple, consisting of nave and chancel only: there are no Romanesque churches with original aisles and transepts, until we come to the transitional transepts of Christ Church Cathedral in Dublin, another entirely non-Irish building. A tall, triangular pediment, surmounting the arch on the face of the wall, is a notable feature of Irish Romanesque doorways. The predominance of the Cistercian Order in mediaeval Ireland had important consequences. In accordance with the Cistercian system, a network of daughter houses began to spread over the whole of Ireland. The Masons Guilds, which evolved the Gothic styles on the Continent and in England, had scarcely any direct influence upon church building in Ireland.
