Church, Abbeylands, Co. Waterford

Co. Waterford |

Religious Houses

Church, Abbeylands, Co. Waterford

On a low knoll above the northern bank of the River Suir, a Church of Ireland building from 1820 occupies a site where virtually nothing of what came before it has survived above ground. The graveyard surrounding it is large, roughly 75 metres by 70 metres, and subrectangular in outline, and the scale of that enclosure hints at something far more substantial than a modest parish church ever was.

The site is associated with the parish of Kilculliheen, and it is thought to be where Dermot Mac Murrough, the King of Leinster whose invitation to the Normans would reshape Ireland entirely, founded an Arroasian convent in 1151. The Arroasians were a reformed order of Augustinian canons and canonesses whose rule spread widely through Ireland in the twelfth century, and this house was established as a priory of St Mary de Hogges in Dublin. By 1257 it had been elevated to the status of an abbey, and it continued in that form until the Dissolution of the Monasteries brought it to an end in 1540. At that point, records indicate the complex included a belfry, a hall, a dormitory, four chambers, kitchens, and a granary, suggesting a working religious community of some scale. None of that remains. No stonework, no foundations visible at surface level, no trace of the medieval church that was then serving the parish. The 1820 building replaced whatever was standing, and the ground has apparently yielded nothing to indicate what lies beneath.

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