Editorial The cover of this issue of Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy is graced by Vera Klute’s fine portrait of Françoise Henry, commissioned to form part of the Academy’s Women on Walls initiative. Of the four major scholars, and Members of the Academy, painted by Klute, Henry has a strong association with this journal, having contributed three substantial articles. It is fitting, therefore, that this volume includes an ‘In Retrospect’ piece by Peter Harbison providing an overview of her published work. Two of Henry’s PRIA articles, which examine aspects of Irish manuscript illumination, illustrate her command of medieval art history and the formative role she played in the development of that discipline in Ireland.1 In contrast, Henry’s first article for this journal, published in 1957, is one of her most important contributions to the field of archaeology.2 It comprises a detailed survey of early medieval settlement at the western end of the Iveragh peninsula, Co. Kerry, which she had conducted—mainly on foot and by bicycle—at various times over a period of twenty years. This is one of the richest archaeological landscapes on the island and Henry’s paper was the first to demonstrate that richness comprehensively. In doing so, she made a vital contribution to the study of the already famous monastery of Skellig Michael: for the first time, it could be viewed, not in isolation, but situated within its local archaeological landscape. Among her many discoveries were the now well-known cross-slab with alpha and omega at Loher,3 the drystone church and gable shrine on Illaunloughan, which have since been excavated,4 and the drystone church and cross-slab on Beginish Island. Her survey was by far the most detailed record available to the Iveragh Peninsula Archaeological Survey team when they began their work in 1986. Indeed , due to subsequent destruction and vegetation growth, it remains the most detailed record we have of some sites, including, for example, the ecclesiastical doi: https://doi.org/10.3318/PRIAC.2017.117.09 1 F. Henry, ‘Remarks on the decoration of three Irish psalters (British Museum, Cotton MS. Vitellius F.XI, St. John’s College, Cambridge, MS. C.9 (I.59), Rouen, Bibliothèque Municipale, MS. 24 (A.41))’, Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy 61C (1961), 23–40; F. Henry and G. L. Marsh Micheli, ‘A century of Irish illumination (1070-1170)’, Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy 62C (1962), 101–65. 2 F. Henry, ‘Early monasteries, beehive huts, and dry-stone houses in the neighbourhood of Caherciveen and Waterville (Co. Kerry)’, Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, 58C (1957), 45–166. 3 F. Henry, ‘Three engraved slabs in the neighbourhood of Waterville (Kerry) and the cross on Skellig Michael,’ Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland 78 (1948), 175–177. 4 J.W. Marshall and C. Walsh, Illaunloughan Island. An early medieval monastery in Co. Kerry (Bray, 2005). Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy Vol. 117C, i–iii © 2017 Royal Irish Academy Editorial ii site in Termons townland, north of Lough Currane.5 John Sheehan, the director of that survey, remembers two elderly brothers, the last inhabitants of Beginish, presenting him with a ‘stick’—a red and white ranging rod—that she had accidentally left behind some forty years before.6 Initially, Henry set out only to survey the ecclesiastical sites but quickly realised that she could not ignore the many related drystone buildings, both unenclosed and within raths and cashels. She recorded dozens of these structures for the first time. Many of them were identified by scrutinising old field systems from the opposite side of a valley, allowing her to home in on the buildings associated with them.7 Indeed, field systems are drawn, albeit approximately, on some of her sketch maps. Her survey, then, can be considered an early example of landscape archaeology. At the time, most scholars believed that the early Irish church was almost exclusively monastic in organisation, and at the start of the paper she went along with that consensus: ‘I assume the sites to be monastic, and not merely ecclesiastical, because of the presence of habitation buildings in any well...
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Apr 1, 2024
Patrick P O’Neill 
Open Access