Reconstructing Ruins: Part I The History

Whats Left of St. Mary’s Abbey, Trim. Photo by Ian McKay

If you drive down any road long enough in the land of Éire, you will stumble across a ruin. The Irish countryside is dotted with them. From short square stone foundations that once formed parish churches to 40 meter tall towers that were once part of great Castles, Monasteries and Cathedrals. They give an air of a bygone age. A time of knights and ladies, of Monks and Abbots. An era whose master builders would hew impressive masses of stone, sculpted with such beauty and grandeur that they would not be rivalled for another three centuries. These grey monuments stand amidst the green backdrop of Ireland, emanating an aura of history and conferring ideas of fantasy upon the onlooker.

What walls are left though, are only a mere shadow of their prior form, reduced to a decayed state from which these structures yearn to be seen as they were. One cannot but fell the urge restore the walls that once echoed the songs of those who dwelt inside. However, before one can delve into their reconstruction, one must first go back, not to their golden age, but instead to the age of their tragic demise.

Ardfert Franciscan Friary, County Kerry. Photo by Ian McKay

From Walls to Rubble

What took these great buildings down was not just half a millennia of weathering but rather a set of destructive events that marked the end of the medieval era and the beginning of the most turbulent and bloody period in Irish history.

Painting of King Henry the Eighth by Hans Holbein the Younger from the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum

The Reformation was the beginning of the end for ecclesiastical buildings in Ireland. Upon decrees from King Henry VIII, religious houses such as monasteries, convents, priories, and friaries, would be dissolved and their land confiscated by the king. Land owned and governed by bishops, such as the Bishopric of Cashel, would be confiscated as well.

During the dissolution of the Monasteries in England, all of it’s nearly 900 religious houses were confiscated and sold off by King Henry IIV in a 5 year period between 1536 and 1541. King Henry had similar plans for Ireland, but faced much more opposition. In the same 5 year period he suppressed only 16 out of 400 religious houses in Ireland. After his Tudor conquest in Ireland he managed enforce his orders and suppress half of them before his own death in 1547.

After the Reformation, Irish parish priests and bishops under English control had to renounce Rome and acknowledge King Henry VIII as the head of the church if they were to keep their heads and their churches, but those that complied had no income from the land and little support from the people. Soon leaky church roofs couldn't be repaired and many Catholic-turned-Anglican churches physically shrank in size, as each section of roof caved in. In the countryside small churches were abandoned entirely.

St. Mary’s in New Ross. The current Anglican church only occupies the front half of the original church as seen by the later bell tower. Photograph by Audrius Janecka

You can see today that old Church of Ireland (Anglican) buildings tend to have ruins surrounding them as they inhabit only a fraction of the once beautiful and extensive Catholic edifices they occupy. Elizabeth I, Following in her fathers footsteps, continued the dissolution of religious houses. However, in the west of Ireland some religious orders continued to operate into the 17th century, before the bloodiest war Ireland has ever seen would see them share a similar fate as their eastern brothers and sisters.

Cromwell

There is no figure more hated in Irish history than that of Oliver Cromwell. After defeating the royalists in the English civil war, and executing King Charles I, Cromwell and his new model army set their sights on Ireland. The country had revolted during the civil war, and aside from Dublin, was outside of the control of the newly King-less English Parliament.

Cromwell was a puritan, but calling him puritanical would be an understatement. The things he disliked, he wanted removed, destroyed, burned, and if there was one thing he hated most of all, it was Catholicism. Any work of art that depicted biblical figures, saints, or even angels had to be destroyed.

In England during the English Civil War, Cromwell and his troops would often enter churches and cathedrals to pulverize statues, burn carved furniture, set fire to wooden figures, deface frescoes, rip up paintings, shred illuminated manuscripts, smash stained glass windows, meltdown metalwork, and break altars.

One of Cromwell's Parliamentarian peers, William Dowsing visited 250 churches in his region and charged the churches a service fee for the work of ‘purifying’ their building. A University of Cambridge research article states It is estimated that 97% of all English religious art that existed before this point was destroyed between the Reformation and the actions and repercussions of Cromwell and the Rump Parliament. It was an Iconoclasm like seen before.

When his army arrived on Irish shores in 1649 they determined to inflict the same atrocities there. The Cromwellian conquest of Ireland would have a greater destructive toll on the island than the Vikings ever could have achieved.

Cromwell campaigned across the country, targeting walled cities at first. Along the way destroying countless castles that put up a fight. They were no match for canons. Many Irish would blow up their own castles if they could not be maned, in order to prevent their use by Cromwell. Oliver and his subordinates sought out Friary and Monastery buildings, whether in use or not, to destroy and the monks to execute or expunge. The churches he passed by in the conflict would often be used as stables or receive the fate of burning, especially if he heard they were Catholic.

By the end of the 5 year conflict, 20-40% of the Irish population had died from war or famine brought on by the burning of food stocks by the Cromwellian army. The loss of life & legacy was immeasurable.

The ruins that survive to this day stand out against the bleak history that they witnessed. They serve as a reminder to a dark past, but they dream to be more. What the romantic onlooker sees in them is a vision of what they yearn to be. The ruins lay in wait, for a time when voices can once again fill their halls, for their purpose to be fulfilled, to stand again, noble and dignified.

Ian McKay

September 2020