owner of the lands were Catholic and worshipped elsewhere. (R Moss, 2002) The Civil Survey of Dublin, done between 1654 and 1656 found that ‘the church lands of St Dowlagh’s ’ consisted of three small thatched houses and the wall of a decayed chapel. It would appear for that that St Douloughs was no longer a functioning church. It implies that the stone roofs were no longer intact. Rebuilding certainly took place in this era, post 1656, at the end of the Cromwellian war and it is to that time we may ascribe many of the features we see today : windows of varying shape and design, windows at low level believed to have been used as gun ports. Other changes may have been made at this time. (Moss, 2002) A stairway was inserted in the south west corner of the Oratory which blocked the lavatory which had earlier been installed in the tower house. We can still see the lavatory chute which ascends from near ground level to where the lavatory once stood. An earlier stair by the present south door was removed from the south east corner of the tower house and a hole made in the ceiling over the entrance, perhaps for defensive purposes. Ceremonies in the church The purpose of the church was for the assembly of the faithful for the celebration of Christian rites. In the medieval period, liturgical practices according to the Roman rite had become standardised in the Christian world, with some regional variations. (O’Keefe, 2015) We can expect that there was Mass, weekly and perhaps daily, baptisms, marriages and funerals. We can expect that there was an altar, now gone. We have a small baptismal font on a pedestal inside, which would have been traditionally placed inside the church door, symbolising entrance to the church by baptism, and a more elaborate one to the north of the church, which clearly dates from a period much later than the church's foundation, having a design similar to the huge Renaissance baptistry in Florence. There are the remains of a piscina (Figure 21) for the washing of hands and vessels, possibly wall mounted, with a drain leading outside, or perhaps the waste water drained into a vessel. The church would have had wooden furnishings, now gone. Infant baptism had become standard by the eleventh century. Baptism was probably performed with much ceremony. The performance of