The Slige Dala from Munster continued a short distance eastwards as the approach road to an ecclesiastical enclosure, whose characteristic shape is still preserved in the street alignment from Peter Row round to Johnson Place (now broken by a modern block of flats). This was probably the burial ground and inner sanctum of a monastic settlement founded in the sixth century and called Dubhlinn (Blackpool). The last recorded abbot, Siadal, died in the yeare 790. Part of this ancient enclosure was occupied in Anglo-Norman times by St. Stephen's Hospital for lepers. Leper houses were usually located on the edge of medieval towns, since charity towards the sufferers was mingled with fear of the disease itself. St. Stephen's Green was the common pasture for animals kept by the townspeople. The Vikings' defensive enclosure (Irish longphort), first constructed in 841, may have occupied the eastern end of the ridge on which the medieval town was eventually to grow. An alternative site would have been somewhere near the great ninth-century cemetery at Islandbridge-Kilmainham. Viking Dublin was probably the biggest slave market in western Europe, where men and women of mainly Celtic blood awaited their fate in places as far apart as newly colonized Iceland and Arabic Spain. The Anglo-Norman castle was built initially of earth and timber, and later of stone in the years 1204-28. The medieval castle was largely destroyed by an accidental fire in 1684 and the chief remnant is the Record Tower in the south-eastern angle.
Dubhlinn took its name from a dark-coloured pool (Irish linn dubh) in the lower reaches of the Poddle. Open ground due south of the castle still marks its site and is probably of great archaeological potential. For this was the pool that attracted the Vikings of Dyflinn (as they called it). Here in this tidal pool they could protect their ships from seaward storms and from landward attacks.
 |
|
 |
Here almost certainly was the crossing of three great long distance routeways: the Slige Mor to the west, the Slige Midluachra to the north and the Slige Chualann to the south. At low tide travellers on the northern route forded the River Liffey with the help of rafts of hurdle-work deposited on the mud flats, hence the ancient place-name Ath Cliath (= Hurdleford). The baile prefix is first documented in 1368. When Christianity came to this district, the inhabitants built for themselves a church dedicated to St. Colum Cille (Latin Columba). Its site is more familiar to us as that of Protestant St. Audeon's. The present nave dates from the first half of the thirteenth century, but new windows were inserted in the fifteenth century. The now roofless portions give some indication of the size of what was the biggest parish church in late medieval Dublin. Where Nicholas Street turns into Patrick Street stood the main southern gateway of the medieval town, St. Nicholas's. The walled area, even when enlarged in the thirteenth and early fourteenth century, was remarkably small (about 44 acres) and beyond the defences stretched suburbs in every direction. Nevertheless many of the later monasteries, as well as St. Patrick's Cathedral, had their own walled enclosures, whilst in the fifteenth century several 'extramural' gateways were provided so as to close off access to the town at night and in times of danger. These gateways were a substitute for an outer town wall to protect the suburbs, of the kind that was built for many continental towns. One of these extramural gates, St. James's, later gave its name to a famous brewery.
The largest cathedral in medieval Ireland, the man responsible for its creation c. 1220 was Henry of London, the second Anglo-Norman archbishop of Dublin and a masterly politician in his own right. So important was he that his name comes second in the list of witnesses to Magna Carta, the great charter of liberties presented to King John of England in 1215. During the Middle Ages the ground around St. Patrick's Cathedral constituted one of a number of 'liberties' of Dublin, that is to say, areas of private jurisdiction not subject either to the king's or to the town's writ. St. Patrick's was served for religious purposes by secular canons, some of whom were resident in houses nearby and all of whom were endowed with some part of the archbishop's estate. There may have been a church on the site of St. Patrick's, between two branches of the River Poddle, from early Christian times and a fourth long-distance routeway, the Slige Dlia, came down. The cathedral chapter was headed by a dean, whose counterpart at Christ Church Cathedral was the prior of Holy Trinity. The present deanery stands near the site of its medieval predecessors and dates from 1781.
 |
|
The Cathedral famously purported contains the tomb of Strongbow, a mediæval Welsh peer and warlord who came to Ireland at the request of King Diarmuid MacMorrough and whose arrival marked the beginning of English involvement in Ireland. As with other aspects of Christ Church, the tomb in the nave is not actually Strongbow's: the original tomb having been destroyed centuries ago, an unconnected mediæval tomb was moved soon afterwards from a church in Drogheda to Christ Church, placed on the site of Strongbow's tomb and identified as Strongbow's. The cathedral does genuinely contain the largest cathedral crypt in Britain or Ireland. Having been recently renovated it is now open for visitors. It contains various monuments, a carved statue that until the late eighteenth century stood outside the Tholsel (Dublin's mediæval city hall which no longer exists) and a set of candlesticks which were used when the cathedral last operated (for a very short time) under the Roman rite, when the Catholic King James II, having fled England in 1690, came to Ireland to fight for his throne and attended High Mass in the temporarily catholicised Christ Church''
DUBLIN CASTLE-built between 1208 and 1220, this complex represents some of the oldest surviving architecture in the city, and was the centre of English power in Ireland for over seven centuries until it was taken of by the Irish Free State in 1922. Highlights include the 13th-century record tower, the largest visible fragment of the original Norman castle and the State Apartments, once the residence of English viceroys and now the focal point for government ceremonial functions, including the inauguration of Ireland's presidents. The newest developments for visitors are the Undercroft, and excavates site on the grounds where an early Viking fortress stood, and the treasury, built between 1712 and 1715, believed to be the oldest surviving purpose-built office building in Ireland. It houses a new visitor centre in its vaulted basement.
Little Ship Street (medieval Sheep Street) presents us with a fine stretch of town wall and we re-enter the defences via the site of the Pole (Pool) Gate at the bottom of Werburgh Street. Right in the middle of the medieval town we find the old cathedral of the Holy Trinity, better known as Christ Church. This was founded e. 1030 by King Sitric Silkbeard and Bishop Dunan, and the late twelfth century crypt is the oldest standing building in Dublin. For most of the Middle Ages Christ Church was served not by secular canons but by regular canons of the Augustinian order', the ruins of whose chapterhouse may still be seen immediately to the south. During the thirteenth century the Anglo-Normans gradually reclaimed land from the Liffey so as to obtain a deeper berthage for merchant ships. During the thirteenth century the basic coin was still the silver penny, for official round halfpence and farthings were rare. Essex Street West may represent the late Viking and Hiberno-Norse quayside; quite a few English coins of the tenth and first half of the eleventh century have been recovered nearby.
Of all the standing remains of medieval Dublin the most elusive is the chapter-house of a Cistercian monastery, now concealed by warehouses in Meetinghouse Lane off the street called, appropriately enough, Mary's Abbey. It was highly unusual for Cistercians to be established so close to a town in the Middle Ages: the explanation is that this monastery was founded in 1139 as a Savigniac (reformed Benedictine) house, which was absorbed into the Cistercian order in 1147-8. St. Mary's stood on the eastern side of Oxmantown, the suburb settled by Hiberno-Norse refugees (Osimen) from the main town after the Anglo-Normans, accompanied by King Diarmait Mac Murchada, captured Dublin on 21 September 1170. Oxmantown had its own defences, market-place, green and parish church, St. Michian's.
