Rourke, conservation architect with the National Monuments Service, Office of Public Works, Dublin, which is in charge of site preservation on Skellig Michael. Special mention must be made of our coauthor Grellan D. They also helped to shape both our views and the written account of our discovery. In the initial stages of our inquiries their part was physically the most daring.
![cubus abbey cubus abbey](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/43/04/54/43045408882b935dcc451b5355a126d2.jpg)
All our preliminary plans and drawings were made by Paddy O'Leary on the basis of measurements taken by him and Lee Snodgrass with the aid of a climbing rope. Our success in studying Skellig Michael depended on the dedicated and gracious assistance of many persons. To photograph it called first for acrobatic skills and finally for the use of aircraft, including helicopters. Its surface is scarred by short, narrow disconnected bedrock ledges above vertical cliffs. The peak is a conical tusk of rock whose sides slide away into the ocean with frightening steepness. This investigation of the South Peak was physically our most hazardous undertaking on Skellig Michael. We believe this hermitage was founded in the ninth century by a monk of the monastery of Skellig Michael, to whom even a religious settlement that accommodated no more than twelve monks and an abbot was too great a barrier between himself and God. After a thorough physical examination we could interpret these remains only as the surviving parts of an early Irish hermitage. In the course of our fieldwork on Skellig Michael, we noticed architectural remains on various ledges high up on the South Peak of the island.
![cubus abbey cubus abbey](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/ec/94/b3/ec94b39b87b2c1f1dcfe5028b40f2a89.jpg)
![cubus abbey cubus abbey](https://d3giebhxh544mk.cloudfront.net/uploads/product_photo/picture/8506467/aee87a65fb67eeda.jpg)
Instead, we wish here to guide our readers to the more treacherous peak of the island, once conquered by men who searched fearlessly for ways to reach God. This study is not an analysis of the famous monastery of Skellig Michael, which is the subject of a separate, vastly more comprehensive, inquiry into the Early Christian architecture of Ireland in which we are involved. Rourke The Forgotten Hermitage of Skellig Michael. Berkeley: University of California Press, c1990 1990. Preferred Citation: Horn, Walter, Jenny White Marshall, and Grellan D.