Church, Fieldstown, Co. Dublin
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Churches & Chapels
In a quiet corner of north County Dublin, on the grounds of Fieldstown House just north of the Broadmeadow River, a grassed-over mound and a scatter of overgrown foundations are all that survive of a chapel that once drew pilgrims in considerable numbers.
The site sits within a raised oval enclosure, roughly 45 metres east to west, edged by a bank and external fosse, the kind of earthwork arrangement that often marks an early ecclesiastical enclosure. The chapel foundations themselves measured nearly 19 metres in length when surveyed in 1992, with wall remnants surviving to about 0.6 metres, though since then intensive tree planting and natural overgrowth have made even those traces difficult to read.
The chapel was dedicated to St Catherine, Virgin and Martyr, and takes its name from the Norman family of De la Field, who were granted these lands early in the 13th century. By 1474 it had become a pilgrimage site of enough significance that Nicholas Dovedale, Prebendary of Clonmethan, brought a petition before the Parliament of Edward IV on behalf of its visitors. He complained that pilgrims, described as aliens, strangers and denizens, had been repeatedly vexed and molested on their way to and from the chapel, to the point where many had abandoned their devotions altogether. Parliament responded by placing pilgrims under royal protection for the duration of their journey, forbidding any arrest for debt, treason, felony or trespass while the pilgrimage was underway, and imposing a fine of twenty pounds on any officer who interfered with them or their property. An inquisition held at Swords in 1546 to 1547 recorded the chapel's tithes and the curate's stipend, suggesting it was still functioning, and the Royal Visitation of 1615 noted a curate named Thomas Richmond serving there, though by that point the building was already described as a ruin. When the antiquary Austin Cooper visited in 1784, he found the walls still standing; Archbishop Jones had noted the ruinous state of the chapel as early as 1615.
The site lies within the grounds of Fieldstown House and is not straightforwardly accessible to the public, so any visit would require prior arrangement. The burial ground associated with the chapel, long unused and densely shaded by large forest trees, surrounds whatever remains of the foundations. Traces of an earlier field system, visible as scarps and ditches, extend to the north, east and west of the enclosure. Given the degree of overgrowth recorded since 1992, a visitor should expect to find atmosphere rather than legible archaeology, the oval earthwork being perhaps the clearest surviving feature.