CELTIC HIGH CROSS ON LEHAUNSTOWN LANE – SEE IT IN CONTEXT WHILE YOU CAN
This cross will remain but the context or setting is likely to disappear within the next few years.
I try to visit this area on a regular basis but because of Covid-19 restrictions I have been unable to visit for more than a year and I am beginning to become very concerned about the future of this country lane. Effectively the lane is public but every time that I visit access to the fields and sites along the lane has reduced. This visit I could not access the old church and graveyard or the old cross in the field across the lane from the church.
I would now describe Lehaunstown Lane as nothing more that a public path through a massive building site and I suspect that the hedgerows will disappear within two or three years. When all the development projects have been completed it is likely that the area will become a POPS [Privately Owned Public Space] which is not at all good.
I am willing to bet than most Dubliners do not know of this place or that if they see the name they will assume that it is a misspelling of Loughlinstown [which is nearby]. To add to the confusion the tram stop is Laughanstown but the laneway leading to Tully Church is Lehaunstown.
As you walk along a lonely country lane from the LUAS tram stop at Laughanstown to the old church at Tully the first thing of note that you will see is a well preserved high cross. The cross was saved from destruction by James Grehan in the later part of the nineteenth century. The road next to the cross was being lowered and James Grehan had this small wall built and the cross placed upon it at its original height.
HIGH CROSS AT ENTRANCE TO ST. PETER’S CHURCH – PHIBSBOROUGH DUBLIN 7
This cross was carved with a skull and cross bones above four symbols of the weakness and guilt of humanity. These from left to right are the cock, reflecting the betrayal of Jesus Christ by St Peter, a pillar symbolising his scourging, a serpent reflecting the fall from grace of the garden of Eden and finally the crown of thorns.
The high cross also has a carving of a whip on each corner.
The church designed by Weightman, Hadfield and Goldie in the mid-nineteenth century, replacing a smaller pre-Emancipation chapel on the same site. Following an appeal for funds in 1902 by Archbishop William Walsh, George Coppinger Ashlin of Ashlin and Coleman was engaged to enlarge and remodel the building. Ashlin removed the preexisting nave and tower, adding an impressive 60m high tower and spire and a taller, grander nave.
The interior contains a number of well-executed stained-glass windows, including two compositions by Harry Clarke. The four twin-light windows in the mortuary chapel are unusual abstract compositions dating to 1924, incorporating recycled glass from other commissions. The ‘Adoration of the Sacred Heart’, which dates to 1919, is one of Clarke’s early masterpieces. The building design skilfully exploits the wedge-shaped site at the intersection of the Cabra and North Circular Roads. The spire is a prominent landmark which dominates the local skyline. Initially was a chapel of ease to St. Paul’s, Arran Quay before passing into the hands of the Vincentian Order in the 1830s. Together with the neighbouring presbytery, Saint Peter’s forms part of an important group of ecclesiastical buildings.
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