ARKLOW ABBEY - the possible site of the church and priory THE ABBEY OF THE HOLY CROSS, ARKLOW In James Ware’s 1707 study, THE ANTIQUITIES AND HISTORY OF IRELAND, he claims that the Dominican Friars arrived in Arklow in the year 1264 at the invitation of Theobald Pincera (Butler). A statue of the founder was made for the church. John O’Heyne had little to add to this other than changing the name of the founder: In county Wicklow, on the sea-board, is a Dominican abbey, in a place called in Irish, an tInbhear Mór, and in English, Arklow, founded in 1264, by a certain Lord Theobald FitzWalter, of English origin; but of the friars belonging to this house, I neither know nor can discover anything. He also names a Father James MacDonogh who died in 1692 and was at one stage the prior of the Dominicans of Arklow. Burke’s HIBERNIA DOMINICANA sheds little further light on the history. He spends most of his effort establishing the surname of the founder. In 1414 Pope John XXII granted an indulgence to those who visited the abbey. This would hint that a relic of the True Cross was kept in the abbey but he does not go so far as to claim that there was one. The abbey was suppressed in 1539, and on the 15th of February, 1540, a lease was granted to Edmund Duffy, by King Henry VIII. Five years later title was to pass to Mr. John Travers of Dublin who leased it to Terence MacMurrough in 1547. Title was never restored to the Dominicans and the friars abandoned the abbey at the time of the suppression forever. All that remains today is a cemetery between Main Street and Castle Park at the end of Abbey Lane. This is held locally to be the cemetery of the Dominican Abbey and the cross at its centre is said to be from the Abbey Church. Considering that it must be outdoors since 1539 this limestone cross does not seem to be weathered enough to confirm this belief. The cemetery walls are built of mostly red sandstone and this part of the town has plenty of other structures dating from, probably no earlier than, the seventeenth century. These walls and building should incorporate many of the stones of the original church and priory. It is interesting that there are few great stones. This would imply that the original buildings were quite modest in size. Thomas Burke claimed in the HIBERNIA DOMINICANA that he had seen the church almost intact in his day. The old buildings between the cemetery and Main Street are clearly identifiable in the early Ordinance Survey maps of the town and there is no indication of any ruins. The likelihood is that the Dominican Church and Priory in Arklow were modest structures and demolished soon after Burke’s visit in the early eighteenth century. Unfortunately he made neither sketch nor description of the places he visited. On the road from the cemetery towards the south-east there is plenty of evidence of the history of the Dominicans. The area is called Abbeylands and was the probable site of the abbey farm. The area covers 115 acres and would have been quite a sizable holding. The produce and revenue of this farm would have supported quite a large community so it can be presumed that the friars were reasonably wealthy prior to the suppression. The priory itself is recorded as occupying and working only eight acres so the remaining land was probably leased to tenants with rents paid in produce rather than money. Two of the eight acres occupied by the friars would have included the church and priory buildings, a cemetery and a vegetable garden. The remaining six were probably pasture. The history of the Arklow Dominicans could have ended in 1539 and maybe it did. Abbeylands and the buildings passed into private ownership and the Dominicans never sought nor claimed restitution since then. Yet despite the suppression of the abbey the records of priests in the Archdiocese of Dublin lists a Father James Cocklan as the prior of the Dominicans in Arklow in the 1680s. Forty years later Fathers James Murray (prior), Ambrose O’Connor, Andrew Fottrell and Peter Corr were listed as members of the Arklow community. In the 1750s a report by the provincial, Father Thomas Netterville, stated that there was only one friar living in Arklow. This was a Father John Daly who was working as a curate in Dublin city and was not in Arklow at all. The presence of the Dominicans in and around Arklow could have been either continual or sporadic. The last representative of the Order, Father Stephen OKelly, died shortly after 1835 almost three hundred years after the abbey was seized. It can be presumed with reasonable certainty that the friars never returned to their original site but there is nothing to indicate where they lived if indeed they remained in the Arklow area. In 1779 Archbishop Carpenter of Dublin complained of three friars who claimed to be members of the Arklow community and a further five expected in his Diocese. He was unsure of the validity of their profession and sought to have an order that the provincials of religious orders should not admit people to profession except in actual priories that still existed. The evidence indicates that there was a Dominican community in Arklow in the eighteenth century but not on the site of Holy Cross. The town itself was quite poor and had difficulty is supporting its clergy. The continuation of a group of begging friars seems unlikely. The friars must have lived elsewhere. Locally there is only one place that hints at a monastic site. That is Shelton Abbey and houses an open prison today. However this ‘abbey’ was built for the Earl of Wicklow in 1690 and was not home to any friar. Other local place names reveal no hint of any Dominican activity beyond Abbeylands to the southeast of the town. There is no place called Friarstown, Friarshill etc. near Arklow. However, on the road to Johnstown, about two miles from the town, there was an old fortified house in a townland called Thomastown. The chapter in 1729 ordered the provincial to appoint a prior to the destitute community of Thomastown. The logical conclusion would be that Thomastown would be the town in County Kilkenny but there is nothing to confirm that at all. The Thomastown mentioned in 1729 refers to a community and foundation that has no other records of its existence. Maybe the Thomastown mentioned was the residence of the displaced friars of Arklow. We have to admit that we have no evidence available to indicate activity in the town or its surrounds between suppression in 1539 and the end of the seventeenth century. It is quite possible that the friars abandoned the area completely during these years much as has happened since the death of Father Stephen O’Kelly in 1835. The Dominican activity from 1700 to 1835 involves friars that were assigned to Arklow from Roscommon and Urlar and do not appear to be part of a living local tradition. These men could have come to either re-establish a local community or to invigorate a struggling one.
Posted on: Wed, 01 Oct 2014 17:37:19 +0000