House - 16th/17th century, Dublin South City, Co. Dublin
Co. Dublin |
House
Some historical sites leave behind foundations, earthworks, even a stub of wall.
Others survive only as a single line in a scholarly footnote, their location unresolved, their form unknown. A house recorded in 1598 within the garden of St Audoen's College in Dublin's south city belongs firmly to the second category, existing now as little more than an annotation in the historical record.
The reference comes from Clarke's 2002 study, which notes the presence of a former house in the college garden at that date. St Audoen's, taking its name from the early medieval bishop Audoenus of Rouen whose cult spread to Ireland through the Normans, was associated with one of Dublin's oldest parish churches, itself still standing near the ancient city gate on High Street. By the late sixteenth century, the area around St Audoen's sat within the compressed urban fabric of late medieval Dublin, where gardens attached to ecclesiastical or collegiate properties were not unusual, serving practical and sometimes ceremonial purposes. A house within such a garden might have been a residence, a supplementary building for the college, or something more functional altogether. The record does not say, and Clarke's note is careful not to speculate beyond what the source allows.
Because the house has not been precisely located, there is no specific spot to visit or mark on a map. What remains accessible is the broader landscape of this part of the old city. The area around St Audoen's Church and the adjacent stretch of the old city walls on Cook Street preserves more of medieval Dublin's topography than almost anywhere else in the city, and walking it gives some sense of the tight, layered geography within which this unlocated house once stood. The church itself is open to visitors at certain times of year, and the city walls nearby are freely accessible. For anyone interested in the documentary rather than physical archaeology of the city, Clarke's 2002 publication is the relevant starting point, though the house it mentions may never yield more than this single, tantalising reference.