Tag Archives: Ruins

Easily Overlooked



Some distance to the east of the main site at Clonmacnoise, County Offaly, and easily (although unwisely) overlooked, are the remains of the Nuns’ Church. This little building was built in 1167 under the patronage of Dearbhfhorghaill, wife of Tighearnan O’Rourke, King of Breifne. Famously, 15 years earlier, she had eloped with/been abducted by Dermot MacMurrough Kavanagh, an incident often deemed to have precipitated the Norman invasion of Ireland. The church later fell into disrepair, but both the entrance doorway and the chancel arch were reconstructed in the mid-19th century and are now outstanding examples of Hiberno-Romanesque design, both replete with geometric designs, along with human and animal forms on the chancel capitals. 



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A Site Lonely and Desolate


‘Adjacent to a branch of “the Bog” are the interesting ruins of Clonmacnois, the school where, according to Dr O’Conor, “the nobility of Connaught had their children educated, and which was therefore called Cluain-mac-nois, the secluded recess of the sons of nobles.” It was also, in ancient times, a famous cemetery of the Irish kings, and for many centuries it has continued a favourite burial-place, the popular belief enduring to this day, that all persons interred here pass immediately from earth to heaven. The abbey is said to have been founded by St. Kieran around the middle of the sixth century, and soon became “amazingly enriched”, so that, writes Mr Archdall, “its landed property was so great, and the number of cells and monasteries subjected to it so numerous, that almost half of Ireland was said to be within the bounds of Clonmacnois.” The ruins retain marks of exceeding splendour. In the immediate vicinity there are two “Round Towers”.’
From Ireland: Its Scenery, Character, &, by Mr & Mrs S.C. Hall, Vol. 2 (1842) 






‘We now pass the Grand Canal, and at Shannon Bridge see, on the right, the celebrated ruins of Clonmacnoise, the most recent description of which is given by Dr. Rodenburg, as follows: “Close to the shore stands Clonmacnoise, one of the most remarkable ruins in this island of the saints. The banks rise here slightly, and on the grass-clad mound stand two round towers, ruins of churches and a cemetery. On the first hillock are the sunken walls of an old ecclesiastical building; on another hill is the great round tower. The roof has disappeared, and a broad belt of ivy winds like a garland round its centre. Down in the bottom, rather further inland, is the second round tower, still perfect, and behind it, M’Dermott’s Church with its splendid round arched portal, fresh as if carved but yesterday. From the mound of the great round tower to the second the ground is covered with upright gravestones, among which stands a ruin, St Kieran’s Church, where the saint himself is said to be buried. The wonder of Clonmacnoise is St Kieran’s Stone, a cross of rare beauty, covered with sacred images. A wall surrounds the holy spot, which is to this day the scene of many pilgrimages and processions”.’
From How to Spend a Month in Ireland, and What it Will Cost by Sir Cusack Patrick Roney (1861) 






‘Like most of these sites, Clonmacnoise occupies a site lonely and desolate, significant of that spirit of asceticism which was wont to exclude the world and repel its busy life. The loneliness of Glendalough is that of the secluded valley; that of Clonmacnoise of the desolate flat in the midst of a wild moorland country, over which the Bog of Allen stretches its almost interminable waste. “If ever,” says Otway, “there was a picture of grim, hideous repose, it is the flow of the Shannon from Athlone to Clonmacnoise.” Round a swampy flat of meadow the river winds in an amphitheatre, upon the southern curve of which the seven churches are erected. To obtain the best view of the group, one should ascend the green hill which rises at the northern extremity like an oasis in the desert. From this he will see the churches, the two round towers, the overhanging bastions of the old castle of O’Melaghlin, all rising, ruinous and desolate, as if out of the brown bog that stretches away southward…In the extensive churchyard most of the churches are situated, and the intervening spaces are crowded with tombs and graves ancient and modern – for it is still a favourite place of burial with the people – with inscriptions in the oldest form or Irish characters to the modern Roman and Italian letters. But perhaps the most remarkable and interesting objects are the numerous antique crosses, some of the most exquisite workmanship and richly carved with scriptural subjects.’
From Picturesque Europe: A Delineation by Pen and Pencil, by Bayard Taylor, Vol. 1 (1875)  


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Looking Back




Looking back over posts during 2025, the Irish Aesthete seems to have featured a lot of castles. Some of them are the real thing, dating back to the Cambro-Norman period, such as those above: Castlecarra, County Mayo (see Difficult to Locate without a Guide « The Irish Aesthete), Greencastle (see A Noble and Commanding Appearance « The Irish Aesthete)and Dundrum Castle (see Boldly and Picturesquely Seated « The Irish Aesthete), both County Down.




Some of them while commonly named castles, are actually tower houses from the late-medieval period, such as Balief Castle, County Kilkenny (see Beyond Balief « The Irish Aesthete) and Ballinlough Castle, County Offaly (see A Picturesque Eye Catcher « The Irish Aesthete) and Synone Castle, County Tipperary (see In Circles « The Irish Aesthete).




Some of them have been repaired or are undergoing restoration, like Barryscourt Castle, County Cork (see Reopened « The Irish Aesthete), Bremore Castle, County Dublin (see A Work in Progress « The Irish Aesthete) and Drimnagh Castle, Dublin (see Showing What Can be Done « The Irish Aesthete).



And finally, some are 19th century reimaginings of an ancient castle, such as Castlewellan, County Down (see A Somewhat Institutional Air « The Irish Aesthete), Johnstown Castle, County Wexford (see This Magnificent Building « The Irish Aesthete) and Belfast Castle (see Time for a Makeover « The Irish Aesthete). Are there further examples to be discovered and investigated in the year ahead? Without doubt, the answer is yes and the Irish Aesthete looks forward to doing so in 2026…

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Designed rather for Military than Ecclesiastical Purposes


‘The churchyard of Mainham is situated close to a remarkable moat near the entrance gate to Clongowes Wood College, the former residence of a family named BROWNE who in their day called the place Castle Browne which reverted to its present ancient name when this well-known Roman Catholic College was founded there. Extensive remains of the old church and buildings in connection with it still exist. By the side of the little trefoiled-headed window of the chancel is a small circular mural table with the following inscription:-
+
IHS
Here lieth ye body of Margrate DILON who deceased February ye 7th 1816 aged 68 years. & also ye body of Danniall BYRN who deceased May ye 30 17_8 aged 77 years.
Erected by Barnaby BYRN
A small coat-of-arms, of the O’BYRNE family is cut in relief below the inscription.’
Lord Walter FitzGerald, Journal of the Association for the Preservation of the Memorials of the Dead, 1904




The Order of Knights of the Hospital of Saint John of Jerusalem, otherwise known as the Knights Hospitaller, was a mediaeval military order founded in the early 12th century. Originally established to care for pilgrims travelling to Jerusalem during the Crusades, the order developed into an international body of mounted knights. Members took an oath to provide hospitality for the sick, injured and poor, while also training for warfare in defence of Christianity. The Knights Hospitaller arrived in Ireland around the same time as the Cambro-Normans and here, as elsewhere, the order was organised around a central Priory and Preceptories. In 1174, Richard de Clare, otherwise known as Strongbow, established the Priory of Ireland and Hospital of St John at Kilmainham on the outskirts of Dublin: it stood to the west of the site where the Royal Hospital Kilmainham now stands (some of the stones of the old priory were supposedly incorporated into the hospital’s chapel). Eventually the order had 129 preceptories across the country, including one already seen here at Kilteel, County Kildare (see Inside the Pale « The Irish Aesthete). Elsewhere in the county, another was found at Mainham. 




According to the Rev. M Comerford in Collections relating to the Dioceses of Kildare And Leighlin (1883), ‘the old parochial church of Mainham, or Menham, still exists in ruins. It was about 65 feet in length, by 18 in width. A tower with a stone staircase, stands on the south-eastern side and appears to have been designed rather for military than ecclesiastical purposes. The church-ruin stands in the midst of an extensive burial-ground.’ Little has changed since this was written, indeed the church was already recorded as being a ruin by the mid-17th century. Like so many other such places in Ireland, even after the building ceased to be used for religious services, it continued to be used as a burial site, with a number of attractive old funerary monuments found here, not least that mentioned above. 


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Not Long for this World



In County Kerry, Abbeydorney Abbey, otherwise known as Kyrie Eleison, was founded in 1154 as a daughter house to the existing Cistercian monastery at Monasteranenagh, County Limerick. Christian O’Conarchy, first abbot of Mellifont (the original Cistercian foundation in Ireland) retired to Abbeydorney in old age, dying and being buried here in 1186. In 1227 the Abbot of Abbeydorney was deposed for his involvement in the ‘Conspiracy of Mellifont’, an attempt by Irish Cistercian monasteries to resist reform imposed on them by their superiors outside the country.  More than 200 years later, in 1453 another abbot was accused of misrule by a monk of Monasteranenagh. Following the Dissolution of the Monasteries in the 16th century, Abbeydorney and its lands were granted to Edmond FitzMaurice, Baron Kerry and the buildings gradually fell into disuse. All that remains today are some cloistral ruins (rather lost amidst more recent gravestones) and a 15th century church, but the latter is in such poor condition that it has had to be surrounded by high fencing. Unless remedial works are undertaken here, the structure looks not long for this world.



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In Circles



Synone Castle is another cylindrical tower house found in County Tipperary, not unlike that at Balief (see Beyond Balief « The Irish Aesthete) and Ballynahow (see Encircled « The Irish Aesthete). Surrounded by the remains of a bawn wall (within which stands a relatively new residence) and rising some 50 feet, the building is of four storeys with small openings on each floor and three machiolations at the top. There appears to be little information about the castle, said to have been built by the Butler family. 



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The Remaining Third




As its name indicates, Threecastles in County Wicklow was once the site of three fortified buildings, only one of which still survives, at least in part. While the history of this tower house is unclear, it is believed to have been constructed in the early 16th century when this part of the country came under the control of Gerald FitzGerald, eighth Earl of Kildare who was Lord Deputy of Ireland in the years until his death in 1513. Faced in local granite, the battlemented upper section of the three-storey building is missing, as is a substantial portion which once extended to the west.




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Inspiring Reverential Awe


‘The foundation-charter of this abbey is in the Monasticon Anglicanum, and recites, that Harvey of Mount Maurice, who was Seneschal to Richard Earl of Pembroke, made a grant of divers lands to St.Mary and St.Benedict, and to the monks of the abbey of Blidewas in Shropshire, for erecting an abbey at Dunbrody for Cistercian monks; to this charter Felix, Bishop of Ossory, is witness, who was promoted to that see in the year 1178. This place is in the barony of Shelburn, four miles south of New Ross. The Cistercians, from their first introduction into this isle by St. Malachy, Archbishop of Armagh, were much favoured by the Irish nobility, and not less by the English. Hence they everywhere acquired immense possessions, and were enabled to execute in the best style, their different religious houses. Richard, Earl of Pembroke and Walter, his grandson, were benefactors to Dunbrody.
Harlewin, Bishop of Leighlin, was interred in the abbey-church, A. D. 1216, a great part of which he caused to be erected, and Edward III. in 1348, granted a confirmation of all the possessions of this abbey, and so did Henry IV. in 1402.’





‘Perhaps the most extraordinary instance of a sacrilegious plunderer that occurs in our ecclesiastical annals is that of Alexander Devereux or De Ebroico, the last abbot of Dunbrody. By deed dated the 10th of May 1522, he granted to his relation, Stephen Devereux, the town and villages of Battlestown, little and great Haggart, Ballygow and Ballycorean, for the term of sixty-one years, at the annual rent of twenty-two marks, and having thus liberally provided for his family, he surrendered the abbacy, and was consecrated Bishop of Ferns in 1539, in St. Patrick’s, Dublin, by George Brown, Archbishop of Dublin, and others. In this see he continued the same course as before at Dunbrody. He leased to his brother, James Devereux, and his kinsmen Philip and William Devereux, almost all his see-lands, at small rents. After presiding at Ferns for almost twenty-seven years, he died at Feathard in 1566.’





‘The ruins of Dunbrody are great, and have a grandeur, which at first sight inspires reverential awe; to which the solitude of the place and its wilderness not a little contribute. The walls of the church are pretty entire, as is the chancel. In the church are three chapels vaulted and groined. The great aile is divided into three parts by a double row of arches, supported by square piers, the inside of the arches have a moulding which springs from beautiful consoles. The tower is rather low in proportion to the building, and is supported by a grand arch, very little inferior to that of Boyle and Ballintubber: The foundation of the cloisters only remains, they were spacious. The western window is of an uncommon form, and the western door under it magnificent, with filigree open work cut in the stone, of which one single bit now  survives, and that almost worn smooth by time, but raised enough to put the finger under it.’

Extracts from The Antiquities of Ireland by Francis Grose (Dublin, 1791)
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The Tomb of the Unknown Family



Today being Hallow’een, here are some rather dejected looking family mausolea in the graveyard of St Mary’s, Croom, County Limerick. One or two of them can be identified, an example being that carrying the notification, ‘This Vault was erected by Denis Lyons Esqr in Memory of his Eldest Son, and as a Burial Place of the Family, AD 1802.’ Another carries the motto ‘Fortes fortuna juvat’ (Fortune favours the Brave), along with the name of Dickson and the date 1806. The families whose remains were interred in several others, however, are no longer known and they are gradually sliding into ruin.


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The Pale Moon was Rising


For the week that’s in it: on the side of a road to the immediate north-west of Tralee, County Kerry can be found the graveyard of Clogherbrien. Seemingly, this site is where Mary O’Connor, the original Rose of Tralee, was buried. According to popular legend, she was a poor but beautiful servant girl with whom William Mulchinock, member of a wealthy merchant family fell in love and about whom he later wrote the following sentimental lines:
‘The pale moon was rising above the green mountains,
The sun was declining beneath the blue sea,
When I strayed with my love by the pure crystal fountain,
That stands in the beautiful Vale of Tralee.
She was lovely and fair as the rose of the summer,
Yet ‘twas not her beauty alone that won me.
Oh no, ‘twas the truth in her eyes ever dawning
That made me love Mary, the Rose of Tralee.’





The same popular tale proposes that in 1843, having been falsely accused of the murder of another local man, William Mulchinock was forced to abandon the lovely Mary O’Connor and flee Ireland, moving to India where he became a war correspondent on the Northwest frontier during the Afghanistan War. Supposedly, following the intervention of fellow Irishman and Commander-in-Chief of the British army in India, Field-Marshall Hugh Gough, after six years Mulchinock was able to return home. However, the day he arrived back in Tralee happened to coincide with Mary O’Connor’s funeral.  Seemingly Mulchinock was heartbroken, although he recovered sufficiently to marry later that year and move to the United States where he and his wife Alice had a number of children, Mulchinock, legend would have it, then abandoned this family, preferring to return once more to Tralee where he pined for Mary O’Connor before dying of fever in 1864. 





For all its whimsical charm, the above story bears little semblance to the truth. William Pembroke Mulchinock (1820-64) was indeed the member of a well-to-do merchant family in Tralee, and indeed a supporter of the Young Ireland movement in the 1840s. On the other hand, the date of his marriage to Alice Keogh of Ballinasloe was 1847 (when he was supposed still to be in India) and, accompanied by his wife and a young daughter, he emigrated to the United States in 1848: the couple would later have a son. In New York, Mulchinock worked for various newspapers and wrote verses, publishing a collection in 1851: tellingly, this volume (dedicated to Henry Longfellow) did not include ‘The Rose of Tralee.’ That poem had already appeared in print in 1846, when included in a volume called The heir of Abbotsville by English author, Edward Mordaunt Spencer, published the verses in his 1846 volume, The heir of Abbotsville, with an annotation stating ‘Set to music by Stephen Glover, and published by C. Jeffreys, Soho-square.’ As for Mulchinock, it is true that his marriage failed and that he returned to Tralee where in 1861 he was one of the founders of the Kerry Star, the first Roman Catholic-run newspaper in Kerry, dying of fever in October 1864. Returning to Mary O’Connor, her own supposed burial place is marked not by one of the handsome table tombs which proliferate in Clogherbrien graveyard, but by a singularly ugly modern monument. 


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