¹²Westropp, Thomas J. “Slane in Bregia, County Meath: Its Friary and Hermitage.” The Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, Fifth Series, Vol. 31, No. 4, (Dec. 31, 1901): 416-18.
"A flight of sixty-eight steps, eleven running straight from the pointed door leading into the church up to a small slit, whence the staircase is round and the steps spiral without any newel. We pass, at the twenty sixth and forty-seventh steps, two doors into two rooms above the porch, which had only wooden floors, and were under a vaulting; the latter was, before 1896, in a great state of decay, and had partly collapsed; fortunately the repairs by the Board of Works, judiciously carried out in this case,, have secured this interesting building without any disfigurement to the ruins. In the top room above this vaulting, at the fifty-third step, are large pointed double lights to each side, which are (externally) in oblong depressions, with corbels above supporting the water-tables and battlements. At each angle are high battlemented turrets supported internally on massive corbelling. The roof of the bell loft, judging from the weather ledges, must have been very steep, if not an actual spire."
C.E.F. French wrote, "Near the top of the tower, on each side will be seen small projecting corbels three on each side. Look up on the south side and between two of these corbels you will see a small head looking down at you." (Trench, C.E.F. 1995. Slane: Slane Town Trail, Newgrange. Slane: An Taisce. 14-23.)
According to Matthew Seaver, "The church is documented from 1286 onwards but was almost certainly in existence at the time of the invasion (Cai. doc. Ire. ii, 292). " (Seaver, Matthew “Practice, Spaces and Places:an Archaeology of Boroughs as Manorial Centres in the Barony of Slane.” The Manor in Medieval and Early Modern Ireland, by James Lyttleton and Tadhg O'Keeffe, Dublin: Four Courts, 2005, 84-7.)