The story of White Island
White Island lies in Castle Archdale Bay off the east shore of Lower Lough Erne. The roofless church near the shore dates from around 1200 and stands within a larger, earlier ecclesiastical enclosure, on a site used for Christian worship and burial long before the present walls went up. Almost nothing is recorded of the founding monastery; even its original name has been lost.
The figures are older than the church. Carved from sandstone in the 9th or 10th century, they were originally architectural supports for an earlier, probably wooden structure, then later broken up and built into the masonry of the medieval church as ordinary stone. One figure was left unfinished, which tells us the carving was done on the island itself rather than brought in.
Six of the eight figures came to light between 1830 and 1958, gradually recovered from the ruin and the ground around it. They were set into the north wall where you see them today, a line of clerics and other figures with their distinctive heavy-browed faces. In 1928 the church's late Romanesque south doorway was reconstructed from its collapsed state, and it remains the only surviving doorway of its type in Northern Ireland.
The church and figures are now State Care Historic Monuments looked after on behalf of the Department for Communities, in the Fermanagh and Omagh District Council area. Recent archaeological survey has found possible prehistoric activity on the island, hinting that its importance may reach back well before the early Christian monks who made it sacred.