Kieran’s Our City, Our Town Article,

Cork Independent, 18 June 2015

Cork Harbour Memories (Part 27)

Stories from St Mary’s of the Isle Abbey

   Carew’s Map of Cork, c.1600 shows the Dominican Abbey on a marshy island to the south-west of the walled town. The map illustrates a church with a large steeple with an adjacent water mill built next to the river. The name of the island was Sancta Maria de Insula or St. Marie’s of the Isle, the area of present day Crosses Green. This marshy island like the islands on which the adjacent walled town was built on, would have been subject to constant flooding at high tide. Therefore it can be assumed that when the abbey was being built, the unfavourable local ground conditions would have been taken into account.

    An insightful book by Tomas Flynn (1993) entitled The Irish Dominicans, 1536-1641 reveals that in 1216, the Dominican order received papal approval. Due to its universal teaching mandate, it was not long before they established priories in towns and cities in medieval Europe. In addition due to their native French beginnings, it was only natural that the Anglo-Normans in Britain and Ireland became their first patrons. On arrival in Ireland in 1224, the first priories were established at Dublin and Drogheda. In general, initially the Dominicans were viewed as part of the spiritual wing of Norman civilisation and colonisation, but they quickly distanced themselves from that image and became highly favoured and respected by the leading Gaelic families as well.

    Within thirty years, the Dominicans had established over ten friaries geographically spread adjacent to urban settlements such as Anglo-Norman Walled Towns. Among these were among the Dominican Abbey at Cork in 1229 under the patronage of Lord Philip de Barry. Antiquarian Charles Gibson in his History of Cork in 1861 details that the abbey reputedly held a bronze equestrian statue of the De Barry, which was kept in the abbey’s church up to the 1540s.

    As the Dominicans were establishing themselves in Cork, the Franciscans on the North Mall were doing the same. An unfortunate by-product of Dominican success was rivalry with the Franciscans. This included conflict over theological opinions, the making of foundations, sources of alms and benefactions, and recruits. To attract vocations, both orders claimed closer resemblance to the work of the Twelve Apostles. However, arising out of this came strong ambition to succeed and a lot of self seeking in medieval times. They did though over time after numerous quarrels come to acknowledge mutual respect between their orders.

    The early historic references detail the respect that the upper classes in medieval society had for the Dominican order. This is evidenced by a reference in a royal charter in 1317 that tells of free passage for the Mayor of Cork, bailiffs and the Dominican friars into the walled town over South Gate Bridge. The charter goes on to describe that the friars were to be let in for the sake of the good town peoples. Without doubt, the spiritual and educational contributions by the friars would have been invaluable to the quality of urban life within the town. In general, historical works on other Dominican abbeys in Britain and Ireland have shown that the Dominicans helped with social problems such as literacy in a walled town, professional guilds and other devotional organisations.

   Royal respect, in the form of money offerings or alms, was also granted to the Dominican Abbey during the late thirteenth century and in the fourteenth century and fifteenth centuries. Regarding the nobility, many of them with religious connections to the abbey are recorded as been buried on the grounds of the property itself. It is recorded in the late fifteenth century that the Dominican Order at Cork was involved in a reform of the Dominican rule of observance or rules of the order. It is stated that some monks elsewhere in Ireland and Britain had strayed from the typical strict observance of the Dominican rules. The new rules of observance came into effect in Cork in 1488.

   As with the Franciscan Abbey on the North Mall, the mid 1500s was also a turbulent time in history for the Dominican Abbey. During King Henry VIII’s reign the property of the abbey was confiscated. The list of the physical properties of the abbey give an indication of how large the Dominican order was in Cork. It is recorded that Abbey possessed three small gardens containing two acres, a watermill, a fishing pool, thirteen acres of arable lands and twenty acres of pastural land (in County Cork).

    It is also recorded in the medieval period that the monks at the Dominican abbey had two prized relics, the images of St. Dominick and the Blessed Virgin Mary and child. The images of St Dominick were unfortunately publicly burnt due to religious conflict between the Dominicans and the English Garrisons’ orders at the high cross in the walled town on North Main Street in 1578. The blessing Virgin Mary was a small carving in ivory and can be seen today preserved in a silver case now in the possession of the friars at St Mary’s Dominican’s Church, Pope’s Quay.

 To be continued…

Captions:

795a. Plan of Dominican abbey with section of walled town of Cork from Map of Cork, late sixteenth century as depicted in Sir George Carew’s Pacata Hibernia, or History of The Wars in Ireland (1633), vol. 2, opp page 137.

797b. Crosses Green, former site of Dominican abbey (picture: Kieran McCarthy)

Kieran’s Our City, Our Town Article

Cork Independent, 21 May 2015

 Cork Harbour Memories (Part 24)

 Ruins of the North Abbey

    Perhaps, the most known remaining feature of the North Abbey is its water well. The well is situated at the foot of a rock face, on the grounds of the Franciscan Well Brewery and is located within a stone-built well house. At one time, the entrance had a wooden panel with the date of 1688 in iron numbers on it. The well is said to be holy in nature but is not dedicated to any particular saint and at one time is reputed to have been used by Corkonians as a cure for sore eyes, consumption and other ailments.

    Next to the well on its west side, there is a second stone walled room, which is partially cut out of the domineering sandstone rock face. The purpose of this room is unknown but the rockface forms the end wall after a number of metres into this space. Legend has it that beyond this end wall is an underground passage leading up into the environs the Gurranabraher. However, the same legend does not relate any stories of its usage. 

   Two other architectural stone pieces from the North Abbey exist. The first was presented to a Rev. Brother Leonard, a Christian Brother and was built into the garden wall of his monastery at Peacock Lane at Sunday’s Well. Its subsequent history though is shrouded in mystery and its remains are lost. A sketch was drawn of it in 1894 by John Dalton, a city historian, and he describes the piece as a broken fragment of a larger piece. The G of the word Gloria is broken off, the letters I.M. represent the initials of Jesus and Mary. The date on the stone was 1590.

    The second stone is a cut stone head of one of the abbeys window. In architectural terms, it was a double ogee-headed piece. The letters S. B. M. C. stand out on the piece. It was argued in the 1890s by John Dalton who drew a sketch of it that these latter letters stand for ‘Santa Beata Mater Christi’ or ‘Blessed Virgin Mother of Christ’. This stone can still be seen today and is preserved in the distillery wall of Wise’s Distillery (established 1779) at the foot of Wise’s Hill where the hill itself meets the North Mall.

   This stone piece at the foot of Wise’s Hill is said to mark the spot of another holy well named Tobar na Bhrianach translated the well of learning or eloquence. This well, now long gone may have also belonged to the abbey at one stage as it is mentioned in a Franciscan deed in 1588 as in possession of the abbey. It is reputed that people used to come from around the country in the early 1700s to this well, which was adjacent to Wise’s Distillery. Urban folklore has it that this became troublesome as on one or two occasions, the excise authorities caught some persons bringing out buckets of whiskey instead of water out of the adjacent distillery. The owners, the Wise family, were forced to stop the practice of visiting the well and the well was closed and an architectural stone of the Franciscan Abbey was placed on the site to mark where the well was located. Indeed, another well known as ‘Sunday’s Well’ was only a mile to the north west of the walled town. It is said that this well was located in a small circular building, capped with stone and surrounded by trees. The well disappeared under road widening in 1946 and a plaque outlining its location now marks the spot. The surrounding area is named after the monument – Sunday’s Well.

    Apart from the well and associated room of the North Abbey, which can be seen, several of the garden walls behind the buildings, which front the North Mall possess several architectural features of a medieval abbey. In several gardens, stone corbels can be seen jutting out from the wall. These would have been used to support timber roof beams. The same design can be seen in the more complete Franciscan Abbey at Kilcrea in the Lee Valley, Co. Cork.

    Due to political circumstances in Britain, it was only in the mid to late 1600s that a Franciscan chapel and house were built on the site of the abbey. These buildings still existed in the early half of the 1700s but did disappear over time under eighteenth and nineteenth century housing on the North Mall. In 1688, King James II arrived in Cork, and stayed in the house of the North Abbey. He was attended to by two Franciscan Friars and attended by many others in their habits.

    In the years 1730 to 1750, evidence shows that the Franciscan order had moved from the North Mall to three main areas in the city. The first site was adjacent to Shandon, the second in Cotner’s Lane situated in the city centre, between North Main Street and the Coal Market and the third location was near the present area of Oliver Plunkett Street where it meets the Grand Parade. By 1750, the Franciscans had moved from this location and set up a central friary in Broad Lane, which today is part of the present site of St. Francis Church on Liberty Street.

 To be continued…

Captions:

793a. Franciscan Well Brewery Entrance, North Mall (picture: Kieran McCarthy)

793b. Well House, Franciscan Well Brewery, North Mall (picture: Kieran McCarthy)

793c. S. B. M. C. could stand for ‘Santa Beata Mater Christi’ or ‘Blessed Virgin Mother of Christ’. This stone can still be seen today preserved in the former distillery wall of Wise’s Distillery (source: Cork City Library).

Kieran’s Our City, Our Town Article,

Cork Independent,  14 May 2015

 Cork Harbour Memories (Part 23)

 Franciscans at the North Abbey

   Depictions of the walled town of Cork in George Carew’s Pacata Hibernia, c.1600 emphasises a Franciscan Abbey on what is now the North Mall. By 1600, it is to have at least a church with a belfry but with an unknown number of bells. The belfry separated the altar area from the congregation area. The friary was set against a rock face dedicated to Our Lady and early records show that the church was markedly divided in two by high columns and had an excellent choir or altar area in the church. Depictions of the abbey do not show a wall around the whole complex.

    In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, a number of religious houses were established in the suburbs of the walled town of Cork and further out into the region. On the northern hillside, large tracts of land were owned by the Franciscans who also established an associated abbey on what is now the North Mall. The abbey was founded in 1229 by the Irish chieftain, Dermot McCarthy, King of Desmond who was loyal to the English monarch at the time, Henry II. It was one of the first Franciscan structures to set up in Ireland. An abbey at Youghal had been set up in 1224 whilst one in Timoleague was established in 1240. It became commonly known as the North Abbey or Shandon Abbey and flourished for nearly three centuries in particular in terms of the constant population size of its occupants and the financial support of the surrounding lay community in Munster. From early available Franciscan records, it is clear that provincial chapters or National gatherings of the Franciscan monks also took place at the abbey. The years included 1244, 1288, 1291, 1521 and 1533. Indeed, the first Franciscan provincial chapter in Ireland was held at the North Abbey in 1244. Other accounts come from Sir James Ware, an Elizabethan antiquarian who highlights the history of the North Abbey in his writings in 1658; De Hibernia et Antiquitatibus Eius.

     In April 1540, a royal survey under the instruction of the English monarch, Henry VIII detailed that the site of the abbey comprised one hall, one kitchen, one cloister, six large dormitory chambers which could hold a number of monks (number unknown), six cellars, a water mill, a fishing place for salmon, a salmon weir, and several plots of land in the townland of “Teampal na mBrathar” or “Church of the Monks”. Also belonging to the abbey, a dole house or a dwellling existed, which tended to the impoverished people of the Cork area. This stood just to the east of the main complex and in a present day context was located in the vicinity of North Abbey Square on the North Mall. Placename evidence also suggests that the friars possessed a chapel in the northern hills overlooking the walled town known as “Cilleen na Gurranaigh” or “The Little Church of the Groves”. In time, this placename changed to “Gurradh na mBrathair” or “Friars’ Grove”, which is highlighted in the present day northern suburb of Cork City known as Gurranabrahar.

    In 1540, the lands of the abbey were confiscated under King Henry VIII. The royal survey which apart from detailing the buildings and possessions of the contemporary abbey also highlighted that the church and belfry were to be demolished and that the rest of the buildings were to be used for non-religious functions. The abbey was taken for King Henry VIII and be let out to a David Sheghan, who had been a merchant of Cork for 21 years. By 1562, the land belonged to a John Brown and Edmond Gould who were forced to hand it back to the Catholic Church under Queen Mary. However, Queen Mary’s sister, Elizabeth I suppressed monasteries again during her reign and the lands were passed to a wealthy merchant named Andrew Skiddy.  It is unknown if Skiddy took up residence in the Abbey complex but by 1626, much of the buildings had been demolished except the walls of the church.

     John Windele, an eminent Cork antiquarian related in his History of Cork in 1844, that on digging foundations for the current red brick houses in 1804, a number of stone coffins belonging to the Franciscan abbey were discovered. Amongst these was a stone coffin, sculptured with the figure of a sceptre with an incomplete inscription on the lid. The partial inscription was in Norman French and comprised of the following “Sa Alme hait merci”, which translated into English means “his generosity dislikes thanks”. The location of these stone coffins today is unknown.

   Robert Day, an eminent antiquarian, related that on digging the foundations of present day Herbert’s Square on the North Mall in 1896, a stone was discovered with the date 1567 etched on it. In addition, a small plate of metal was found on which was etched a representation of the Nativity and a long inscribed description in Dutch. In addition, a font and a silver chalice were discovered. Both the font and chalice were sent to Whitechurch Chapel just north of the City.

 To be continued…

Captions:

792a. Plan of Shandon Abbey, from Map of Cork, late sixteenth century as depicted in Sir George Carew’s Pacata Hibernia, or History of The Wars in Ireland (1633), vol. 2, opp page 137.

792b. Shandon Abbey from A description of the Cittie of Cork/ Plan of Cork, circa 1602 by George Carew (source: Hardiman Atlas, Library of Trinity College Dublin)

792c. North Mall, present day (source: Kieran McCarthy)