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Corcomcoe_Abbey_049_2013

Carving on the capital of the right column in the southern chapel of the Cistercian Abbey of Corcomroe, County Galway, Ireland. The carving is in the style of transitional work from Late Romanesque to Gothic, termed the "School of the West" style, in the abbeys of Boyle. The term “School of the West” was coined by Harold Leask to a group of a dozen churches built west of the River Shannon in the first half of the 13th century which have architectural details that cannot be found in contemporary buildings in the rest of Ireland. In some ways this term has been used to stress the conflict between ‘native’ Cistercian houses and those founded by the Anglo-Norman invaders and the vernacular and Cistercian influence in the west of Ireland abbeys. At Corcomroe, and also at Boyle, there is such as degree of non-conformity that it must have been more than a rare example of an individual stone mason's creativity.

Corcomcoe_Abbey_051_2013



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