St. Audoen's churches

Two neighboring churches—one medieval, the other Neoclassical—united by name and divided by faith

The Protestant St. Audoen's Church of Ireland

The southeastern anchor for the medieval city of Dulbin was the Castle, and guarding the Southwest entrance was St. Audoen's Church of Ireland, Dublin’s oldest church in continuing existence. (It one of the few places where, in an excavation, you can glimpse a stretch of medieval Dublin’s cobblestone streets.)

Named for the French Saint Ouen, St. Audoen’s was built between 1181 and 1221 on the site of an even earlier church dedicated to St. Columba and existing since at least the 9th century.

That is the era of the Celtic gravestone preserved inside, the so-called Lucky Stone, which was propped against the church belltower until the early 14th century, when merchants dragged it across the street to lean against the newly well built at the bustling Cornmarket, Dublin’s center of commerce, so that all could touch it daily for luck.

(In 1826, some outsiders tried to steal the Lucky Stone, but as they fled Dublin the stone grew heavier and heavier until their horse collapsed and they were forced to abandon it by the wayside; 20 years later it was found and returned in triumph to remain at its church, guarded, it is said, by eight centuries’ worth of parish clergy ghosts.)

But being the church for a wealthy merchant’s parish did not save St. Audoen’s from the depredations of time—or of greedy guilds, who siphoned off its funds and left it to decay.

Combine this with the the slow suburban flight of the area’s wealthy (Protestant) starting in the late 17th century—and St. Audoen’s was a parish for the protestant Church of Ireland.

By the 18th century, with the neighborhood transformed into a mostly poor and Catholic one, ancient St. Audoen’s had lost most of its parishoners—and its roof. In 1898, the bells in its shaky 17th century tower—three of the six bells are the oldest in all Ireland, cast in 1423—were silenced for the first time in centuries.

Since restoration work to shore up the tower in 1983, they now ring again, and the church itself has been in part restored, with a new roof from the circa 1190 nave, with the adjacent St. Anne’s Chapel from 1430 turned into a little museum.

My favorite bit is actually in the surviving church architecture: these “Squint Windows,” narrow openings with deep angled troughs cut into the stone which at first might look defensive (arrow slits in a church?) but are actually so that people in the adjacent building could see the high altar. These were often so that those unwelcome at the Mass—lepers, or cloistered monks or nuns—could still witness the service and raising of the host. The plaques here at St. Audoen’s hazard that they were so the clergy who lived in the priest’s house could keep an eye out for thieves.

Also here is the marvelous medieval knightly tomb of Sir Roland Fitz-Eustace, Earl Portlester and his Lady Margaret, who endowed the now-roofless Portlester Chapel in 1485 after divine intervention saved the Earl from a shipwreck nearby.

The Roman Catholic Church of St. Audoen’s

Now about those Catholics. They got their own, overlapping parish—confusingly also named after St. Audoen, complete with their own Roman Catholic Church of St. Audoen’s, which was built in in 1841–47 right next to the medieval, Protestant one.

It is a monumentally, neoclassically dull structure—inside and out—except for two things. The first is the construction itself—not the imposing columned facade, but the massive backside constructed of black calp limestone from south of Dublin, off of which stretch a preserved section of Dublin’s late medieval city walls.

The other interesting tidbit is that mass was still said in Latin here up until 2007—at which point it switched over to Polish.

Yes, St. Audoen’s is now home to the Polish chaplaincy for Ireland—and if you spend more than a day or two here, you will start realizing that a surprising percentage of the people you meet in the service industry—waiting your tables or staffing your hotel—are Polish. (Construction work, too, but most tourists don’t see that.)

Tips

• Planning your time: TK
• Tours: TK
• Dublin Pass: TK
• Joint ticket: TK