Tag Archives: Athenry

King John was not a Good Man


‘King John was not a good man –
He had his little ways.
And sometimes no one spoke to him
For days and days and days…’
From King John’s Christmas by A.A. Milne

Historic buildings tend to attract myths, as anyone who has consulted the Dúchas national folklore collection can confirm. As an example, the number of properties in Ireland which Oliver Cromwell is held responsible for destroying would have required him to spend considerably longer than the nine months he did in this country. Similarly, the construction of a large number of Anglo-Norman castles here are often attributed to King John, although he only and briefly visited Ireland twice: the first time in 1185 when, as Lord of Ireland, he failed both to strengthen the administration of his lordship and to bring Norman colonists like Hugh de Lacy under royal control. His second visit in 1210, by which time he had become King of England, was more successful but very short, lasting two months. Nevertheless, in popular memory he is held responsible for commissioning many castles around the country, including that in Athenry, County Galway, even though he never made it to this part of the island and the castle was built some 20 years after his death in 1216.




Seemingly the earliest recorded association between Athenry Castle and King John can be found in John Dunton’s Teague Land: or A Merry Ramble to the Wild Irish published in 1698. According to Dunton, ‘When King John came into Ireland to reduce some of his rebellious people here, he built the town of Athenry, and environed it with a good stone wall to be a curb upon them in those parts.’ This association with the long-deceased monarch then became embedded in local mythology and when the peripatetic German Prince Hermann von Puckler-Muskau visited Athenry in 1828, after lamenting the wretched state of the town, he wrote that ‘Here stood a rich abbey, now overgrown with ivy, the arches which once protected the sanctuary lie in fragments amid the unsheltered altars and tombstones. Further on is a castle with walls ten feet thick, in which King John held his court of justice when he came over to Ireland.’ Likewise, a decade later the historian John O’Donovan, who worked in the Topographical Department of the first Ordnance Survey decided that Athenry seems to have been built by King John in the year 1211 to put down the Hy-Briuin, Hy-many and Hy-Fiachrach Aidhne, three most ferocious Connachtan tribes.’ On the other hand, the ever-reliable Samuel Lewis in his Topographical Dictionary of Ireland (1837) noted that Athenry was ‘the first town established by the De Burgos and Berminghams, the Anglo-Norman invaders of Connaught, and at a remote period was surrounded by walls, and became a place of importance.’ 




Meyler de Bermingham was the great-grandson of Robert de Bermingham, an Anglo-Norman knight who had arrived in Ireland in the early 1170s and settled in what is now County Offaly. In the 1230s, Meyler and his father Peter de Bermingham participated in the Norman invasion of Connaught. As part of this, the former built a castle by a fording point on the river Clarin at a spot known as Áth na Rí (Ford of the Kings), from which derives the name Athenry. As for the castle, set inside enclosure walls, it is a large three storey rectangular hall-keep with base-batter, with a basement that would have been used for storage, a great hall on the first floor and an attic above. The battlements date from the 13th century as do the arrowslits in the merlons. In the 15th century, these parapets were incorporated into gables at the north and south ends for a new roof. When first built, the castle’s entrance was at first-floor level, accessed via an external wooden stairs. Carvings on the exterior of the doorcase and inside two of the window openings feature floral motifs in a local style, transitional between Romanesque and Gothic and known as the ‘School of the West.’ The castle appears to have been abandoned in the 16th century and old photographs show it as a roofless ruin. However, in 1991, the Office of Public Works initiated restoration work on the site and it is now open to visitors during the spring and summer periods.


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Old and New



The former St Mary’s Church stands close to the market cross in Athenry, County Galway (see last Wednesday, …). It was built on the site of a chancel of a medieval church. This is thought to have been first constructed around 1240 when Meyler de Bermingham first established a presence in this area by ordering the erection of a castle nearby. It was made a collegiate church in the mid-1480s and most of what remains dates from this period or later. The church survived until 1574 when destroyed by the sons of the Earl of Clanrickard (despite their mother being buried in the building). It was never rebuilt, but in 1828 a new Church of Ireland was built here, with assistance from the Board of First Fruits. The building closed for services at the end of the last century and was converted into a local heritage centre.



*New video on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LwylDFQjmEc&t=188s

Time to Move?


What remains of one of Ireland’s last surviving market crosses stands in the centre of Athenry, County Galway. Believed to date from c.1475, originally it would have been part of a much larger, and taller, monument; it was placed on the present plinth at the start of the 19th century. The south face carries a depiction of the Crucifixion, while on the other side can be seen (just about) a crowned Madonna and Child. The cross is badly weathered, its condition not helped by being in the middle of a busy traffic junction. Although this is now the only market cross in Ireland still in situ, perhaps the time has come to move it to another, less environmentally damaging location?


*New post on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2cvPCjwXwU&t=11s

Amid Low-Lying Fields


Today Athenry, County Galway is best known for featuring in a lachrymose ballad usually sung by performers somewhat worse for alcohol. However, the town was of significance from the Middle Ages onwards, as evidenced by large sections of the mediaeval walls that still survive, and a number of important buildings in the centre, not least a castle dating from c.1235. Originally guarding the crossing point over the river Clarin, it consists of a keep and the remains of a separating banqueting hall all enclosed within their own defences. The town subsequently developed around this castle, constructed by the Anglo-Norman knight Meyler de Bermingham whose descendants would become Barons Athenry and Earls of Louth. De Bermingham was also responsible for the other significant mediaeval remains in Athenry, the nearby Dominican Priory.




One of the Dominican order’s most important houses in Ireland, Athenry Priory of SS. Peter and Paul was founded by Meyler de Bermingham in 1241 when he purchased the land on which it stands for 160 marks and then provided the same amount for the construction of the church, as well as providing some of his men to help with the work: he would be buried inside its walls following his death in 1252. Many of his descendants were likewise interred here. Other local families, both Anglo-Norman and Gaelic assisted in the development of the site: Felim O’Conor built the refectory, Eugene O’Heyne the dormitory, Cornelius O’Kelly the chapter house, and others the cloister, infirmary, guesthouse and so forth: almost nothing of these domestic buildings survives. Alterations were made over successive generations. In the late 13th/early 14th century for example, rebuilding work took place on the west gable of the church, to which an aisle and transept were added on the north side. In the fourteenth century William de Burgh (forebear of the Earls and Marquesses of Clanricarde, with whom the priory would later be associated) left money to enlarge the church, adding some 20 feet to the choir, and building a new entrance at its west end (now largely lost after a handball alley was built on the exterior of the building in the last century). Meanwhile in 1408 Joanna de Ruffur left funds to construct a new east window. A fire destroyed much of the priory in 1423, after which indulgences were granted by Popes Martin V and Eugene IV to shoe who contributed to the buildings’ repair. During this period, a crossing tower was erected in the church, with a number of windows being replaced or blocked, and the aisle arcade being reduced.




In the 16th century, Athenry Priory initially escaped the dissolution that befell other such religious establishments. In a letter dated July 1541 Anthony St Leger, Lord Deputy of Irleand advised Henry VIII that as the priory ‘is situated amongst the Irishry … our saide sovereign lord shoulde have lyttle or no profit.’ However, the head of the priory Adam de Coppynger and his fellow friars agreed to abandon their religious habits and dress in secular clothing. In 1568 Elizabeth I directed that the Earl of Clanricarde could preserve the friary for a burial place but nine years later the priory and 30 acres of land in Athenry (plus more elsewhere) was granted to the town of Athenry: around the same time both town and priory were sacked by members of the Earl of Clanricarde’s family. Towards the end of the century the Dominicans reoccupied the priory but it suffered when the whole town was burnt in 1597. Still the Dominicans lingered on in the area, until the early 1650s when English soldiers wrecked the priory. Later the domestic buildings were largely demolished, and an army barracks built in their place. This remained in use until 1850. A late 18th century image shows the church without roof but the central tower still standing: it collapsed in 1845. Relatively little change has since occurred.




Despite quantities of damage inflicted on it over the centuries, the interior of the priory church retains much of interest. Of particular note are two large monuments in the choir. That tucked into the south-east corner was a mausoleum for the de Burgh family, who it will be remembered were permitted by Elizabeth I to use the building as a burial site. The monument in its present form dates from 1835 when repaired by Ulick de Burgh, first Marquess of Clanricarde. The upper portion (which looks as though designed to have something further on top of it) carries a peer’s coronet and the family coat of arms with its motto: Un Roy, Un Foy, Une Loy. A considerable portion of the choir is then taken up with a monumental tomb to Lady Matilda Bermingham, youngest daughter of the last Lord Athenry (also first, and last, Earl of Louth), who died in 1788 at the age of 20. Of cut limestone, the tomb was decorated with an abundance of Coade figures and stone panels, one of which bears the date 1791, and an urn which features the deceased’s profile. As an instance of contemporary misinformation, one frequently reads online that this tomb was badly damaged by Oliver Cromwell’s troops in search of treasure: since Lady Matilda Bermingham died over 130 years after these troops were in Ireland this seems somewhat improbable, and yet still the story circulates in the internet. The truth is more prosaic. In October 2002 vandals broke into the church, breached the tomb’s walls and pulled out the coffin: who needs to import despoilers when they can be found at home? It was reported at the time that repairs were being carried out on the monument, but these do not appear to have been very extensive and much of the Coade stone ornamentation has been forever lost.