The earliest fully decorated Insular gospel book
The Book of Durrow
The Book of Durrow is the oldest surviving fully decorated Insular gospel book, produced somewhere between roughly 650 and 700 - a clear century before the Book of Kells. It runs to 248 vellum folios and was among the first manuscripts to give over entire pages purely to ornament, the so-called carpet pages of interlaced patterns and spirals. Whether the monks made it at Durrow itself or it arrived later is argued over, but it was certainly here by the year 916. It now sits in the Long Room at Trinity College Dublin. You will not see it in Durrow, but Durrow is where its name comes from.
A noble monastery in Ireland
Columba's monastery
Columba founded the monastery in the 6th century, around 556 to 585 by the various accounts. He is the same figure who later crossed to Scotland and founded Iona, and whose name attaches to Derry. Durrow grew rich and learned enough that Bede, writing in England, called it Monasterium nobile in Hibernia - a noble monastery in Ireland - and tradition has it rivalling Armagh as a centre of study. The Vikings raided it more than once, as they raided Clonard and Derry and the rest, but it survived in some form until the Norman period reshaped the landscape around it.
9th-century sandstone, read like a comic strip
The high cross
The Durrow high cross is a mid-9th-century sandstone cross, a little over three metres tall, carved on every face with biblical scenes. You can pick out Adam and Eve, the Sacrifice of Isaac, the Last Judgement, David playing the lyre, David killing the lion, and the Crucifixion, along with winged beasts and Christ with the apostles Peter and Paul. It has been moved inside the church to shield the soft sandstone from the weather. A complete cross-head from the site is held in the National Museum in Dublin. Five early Christian grave slabs and a holy well survive on the same enclosed ground.