See L. Delisle, L'Evangéliaire d'Arras et la calligraphie Franco-Saxonne du IXme siècle, 8vo, Paris, 1888.
Earlier that is than the conversion of the Saxon conquerors; to some extent a Romano-British Church had been established in Britain during the period of Roman domination, but this native Church appears to have been almost wholly eradicated by the Saxon Conquest.
Celtic manuscripts of all periods are well illustrated by Westwood, Miniatures and Ornaments of Anglo-Saxon and Irish Manuscripts, London, 1868; see also Westwood, Palaeographia Sacra Pictoria, 1843-5, and the companion volume, Illuminated Illustrations of the Bible, 1846.
Tara was the ancient inland capital of Ireland before Dublin was founded by the Viking pirates.
The Irish monasteries of this date appear, frequently at least, to have consisted of a group of a dozen or more separate wooden huts or stone "bee-hive" cells, with one small central chapel of rectangular plan; the whole being enclosed within a wooden fence or a stone circuit wall, in which there was only one door of approach; see Arch. Jour. XV. p. 1 seq.