In the following year the monastery of Iona was burnt down by the Danes, and the Annals of the Four Masters place in the same year the death of Connachtach, a select scribe and abbot of Iona; and four years afterwards the community of Iona, then consisting of only sixty-eight members, were slain by the Danes,[545] [Sidenote: A.D. 802-814. Cellach, son of Congal, abbot of Iona.] Cellach, son of Conghaile, the abbot who succeeded Connachtach, having apparently taken refuge in Ireland. The monastic buildings thus destroyed belonged, no doubt, to the original monastery, which, as we have seen, had been originally constructed of wood, and repaired by Adamnan. Hitherto there had been no feeling of insecurity in connection with such wooden buildings, but since the ravages of the Danes began there is abundant evidence of the frequent destruction of such buildings by fire; and in the present instance there seems to have been not only the entire destruction of the monastery, but also the slaughter of those of the community who remained behind. So complete was the ruin, and so exposed had the island become to the ravages of the Danes, that the abbot Cellach appears to have resolved to remove the chief seat of the Columban order from Iona to Kells in Meath, of which he had obtained a grant two years previously. The Irish Annals record, in the year following the slaughter of the community, the building of a new Columban house at Kells; and we are told that in 814 Cellach, abbot of Iona, having finished the building of the church at Kells, resigns the abbacy, and Diarmicius, disciple of Daigri, is ordained in his place.[546] This monastery at Kells, which thus took seven years to build, was constructed of stone,[547] which now began universally to supersede wood in the construction of ecclesiastical buildings, as less likely to suffer total destruction from the firebrand of the Danes. [Sidenote: A.D. 802-807. Remains of St. Columba enshrined.] At this time, too, the remains of St. Columba seem to have been raised from the stone coffin which enclosed them, and carried to Ireland, where they were enshrined. We know from Adamnan that the body of the saint had been placed in a grave prepared for it, and apparently enclosed in a stone coffin, and that the place in which it lay was perfectly well known in his day. We also know that, at the time Bede wrote his History in 735, his remains were still undisturbed; but, at the time the Book of Armagh was compiled, that is, in 807, they were enshrined and preserved at the church of Saul Patrick on the shore of Strangford Lough in the county of Down in Ireland.[548] It is therefore between these dates, 735 and 807, that they must have been removed.