Caves and St. Patrick...................

Cave[edit]

Chapel, bell tower and penitential beds on Station Island. The bell tower stands on a mound that is the site of the original cave.

Although the cave has been closed since 25 October 1632, several descriptions by early pilgrims survive. They referred to it as a cave or cellar or as an enclosed pit. The entrance, which was kept closed and locked, was quite narrow: about 0.6 m (2 ft) wide and 0.9 m (3 ft) high. Once inside there was a short descent of about six steps. The cave was divided into two parts: the first was about 3 m (9 ft) long, probably with banked sides and only high enough to kneel in; after a turn there was another niche about 1.5 m (5 ft) long.^[9]

Since the site has never been excavated, we can only rely at this point on these descriptions of the cave. However based on other archaeological excavations it seems clear that this was probably an ancient structure. Some have suggested a souterrain, a place for storing crops and animals. However, the size of the cave would make this seem very unlikely. A much more plausible suggestion is that it was one of the ancient sweat houses,^[10] which were actually still in use in Ireland into the twentieth century. From modern practice we know that people would enter these small enclosed places to inhale medicinal smoke produced by burning various plants. The name “purgatorium” could possibly have been used here originally with its Latin meaning as a place for cleansing and purging — much like a modern sauna; especially since the modern notion of “purgatory” as a place for punishment in the afterlife did not come into common use until the thirteenth century.^[11] The cave would then have been a place that people went to for physical or spiritual healing, even before it became associated with St. Patrick in the twelfth century as a place for strictly spiritual healing.