The Cathedral is one of the oldest buildings in Limerick and stands at the heart of the medieval city. Originally the Royal Palace for the Kings of Thomond it was gifted to the Church in 1168. St Mary’s is an extraordinarily complex building representing developments from the mid-twelfth century to the later twentieth century – a treasure of Irish religious art.
The cathedral graveyard contains many graves and tombs of notable people. The physician Samuel Crumpe is buried in the graveyard near the great west door. Prince Milo of Montenegro, Frances Condell (first woman Mayor of Limerick) and Bishop Charles Graves are also interred in the grounds. The last High King of Munster, Domnall was purportedly buried in the cathedral, with the remnants of his stone coffin still visible in the Cathedral chancel. Bishop Cornelius O’Dea is buried alongside several other Bishops of Limerick in what is believed to be an Episcopal vault underneath the chancel itself. Also notable are the Sexton, Barrington, Boyd and Vanderkiste tombs along the south entrance pathway.
THE ROMAN CATHOLIC BURIAL GROUND OF THE CLANCY FAMILY – ST MARY’S CATHEDRAL LIMERICK
This is strange as one would be surprised to see Roman Catholics buried within the grounds of a Church Of Ireland Cathedral. All those buried in the grave between 1729 and 2015 bear the family name including women who married into the family but excluding daughters who married out of the family.
My understanding is that the Clancys were Abbey Fishermen. The Abbey Fishermen were so called as almost all of the fisher families lived in the St. Francis Abbey area of Limerick city. This area was once inhabited by Franciscan monks.
I KNOW THAT I SHALL ARISE AND SEE MY GOD – AD 1488
This inscription is at the entrance to St Marys Church on Claddagh Quay in Galway.
Located on the Claddagh Quay, this Dominican church was designed by William Hague. With its rock-faced granite walls and finely detailed round-headed arches, this handsome church has often been described as being of Norman style. Features such as a carved tympanum and moulded surrounds at the front entrance as well as fine windows enliven the composition. This structure is a good example of the return of the Romanesque style linked with the Celtic Revival-style church architecture of the late nineteenth century. The well-preserved and decorated interior with its richly ornamented reredos, altar and font is especially worthy of note.
The first Dominican foundation in Connacht was Athenry (1241). From there the friars came to Galway in 1488.
When they arrived in Galway, the Dominicans got possession of an old abandoned chapel of ‘the Blessed virgin outside the walls’, otherwise called ‘St Mary on the Hill’, occupied by the Premonstratensian Canons of Tuam from 1235. In later times it came to be called ‘the West Convent’, or ‘St Mary’s outside the gates.’ On the whole, Dominicans in Ireland preferred to live outside the gates of walled towns. They could find a cheaper site, more space, freedom from tolls, and come and go as they wished. The patronage of the wealthy Lynch family, extended thirty years earlier to the visiting friars of Athenry, was maintained in the new foundation.
In the five centuries since the Dominicans from Athenry took possession of the church of St Mary on the Hill, many Galway Dominicans were well known nationally and internationally. We think, for example, of Edmund French who became bishop of Kilmacduagh and Kilfenora, Fr Tom Burke, the ‘prince of preachers’, who worked on the continent and preached not only in Ireland and England but throughout the US, and Fr Dominic Fahy, apostle of Irish emigrants in Argentina. No Galway Dominican, however, has exercised a wider apostolate than Damian Byrne
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