Castledermot

The enclosing bank and ditch of the early monastery of Díseart Diarmada have been lost to the later developments at the site and of the medieval town. However, the graveyard still holds some clues to its long history. Small granite crosses and cross slabs are difficult to date, but some may belong to the early monastic phase. One cross slab, known locally as the swearing stone, has a hole through which oaths were traditionally sworn by shaking hands.

One of the most famous historical characters associated with the monastery is Cormac mac Cuileannán, bishop and king of Munster and author of important texts such as ‘Cormac’s Glossary’. He was a student here and was buried next to his old master, Snedghus, after he died in the Battle of Ballaghmoon, just 7km SW of Castledermot, in AD 908. As you walk under the Romanesque arch you will see a large granite slab with a simple incised Latin cross lying on the grass to your left. This is believed to mark Cormac mac Cuileannán’s grave.

On the north side of the church stands the round tower, which is unusual in having its door at ground level. Known as cloigthech, meaning ‘bell house’ in Irish, it is believed that the monks rang the hours of service from the upper windows using the handbells of the time. In the fifteenth century a passage was built connecting the tower to the church and in the 18th century a large, cast iron bell was added that is still in use today.

Three high crosses stand in the graveyard to the north, south and west of the church. They belong to the Barrow Valley group of granite high crosses that includes nearby Moone high cross. The north and south crosses are highly decorated with scriptural scenes and abstract art. The undecorated base of a third cross stands close to the Romanesque arch. Both the crosses and tower are attributed to Abbot Cairbre, who died in AD 919.

The territory in which Díseart Diarmada stood was granted to Walter de Riddlesford in about 1171, and the earliest evidence for the existence of a borough here is a charter for his ‘vill of Trisseldermod’ between 1225 and 1233. By 1284 the number of burgages or house plots in the town had reached 180.

Tristledermot, as it was then known, was one of four walled town in county Kildare. It was laid out with a main street running north-south. This split in two at the central market square and had long burgage plots running from the roadside to the town boundaries. Already by 1264, the town was deemed a suitable location for hosting large administrative gatherings, and in the June of that year a significant meeting took place that was the first meeting in Ireland to be recorded as a parliament. The town received a seven year murage grant in 1295, most likely because of both the continued threat of attack from the Irish in the thirteenth century and the town’s growing administrative importance. Tristeldermot suffered the ravages of Edward the Bruce and the Black Death in the early fourteenth century, but appears to have rallied.

The only upstanding remains of the town wall can be seen at Carlowgate, where part of the gate survives and fragments can be glimpsed in the overgrown stream bank nearby. However, the location of the original circuit is fairly well understood thanks to a combination of historic maps, excavations and geophysical surveys. Records suggest there were at least three named gates accessing the town: Dublingate to the north, Carlowgate to the south-west and Tullowgate to the south. There may have been a fourth gate to the east, near the Fair Green.

Numerous parliaments and councils met in Tristledermot between 1377 and 1404. It was attacked by the MacMurroughs in 1405 and 1427, but refortification in 1485 by the Earl of Kildare meant that it was considered safe enough to hold a parliament in 1499. The castle was also rebuilt, apparently giving the town its current name.

By the late 1500s Castledermot was still regarded as one of the four principle towns of County Kildare, but it saw considerable decline in the seventeenth century. It was burned by Cromwellian forces in 1650 and the castle and town walls dismantled. The location of the castle has been forgotten but it was probably near the market square. By the end of that century it was described as a ‘poor beggardly town’ and its principal roles into the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were as a postal town, a staging post between Dublin and Kilkenny, and a fair town.

Despite alterations over the centuries, the friary’s church is nonetheless an impressive structure. Entering today via a modern doorway under the once impressive east window, visitors can appreciate the length of the long choir and nave, once perhaps divided by a screen of wood or ironwork known as a rood screen. In the west gable there are two tall lancet windows and a blocked, off-centre doorway was the original entrance. A blocked doorway in the south wall of the nave once led to the cloister.

The church with its adjoining tower are all that remain of a complex constructed some time before 1247, when it received a royal grant from the Royal Justiciar, John Fitzgeoffrey. It was possibly founded by Walter de Riddlesford the Younger. In 1302, the friary received a large building grant from Thomas of Ossary, which saw the construction of the northern aisle of the nave, the north transept and the east window, the latter perhaps part of an extension eastwards. The high altar was under the east window and fragments of stained glass from the east window were found in excavations immediately outside.

In the south wall of the choir, a now blocked doorway once led to the vestry, which in turn led to the domestic tower attached to the south wall. This tower was probably built for defence, the friary being located outside the town defences. The ground floor now stores a collection of window mouldings and cut stone including fragments of 13^th – 14^th century cross slabs. By the time of the Dissolution three hundred years later, it was described as having a church, a tower, two halls, a kitchen, a garden, an orchard, a cemetery, a stonewalled courtyard, three messuages, fields and a water mill.

This Franciscan friary is one of only three in Ireland with a transept to the north. No tracery survives in the notable north window, but it is recorded in antiquarian drawings made before it was pulled down at the end of the 18^th century, allegedly by a farmer worried it might collapse on his livestock!

An arcade of three impressive pointed arches divide off three small side chapels along the transept’s east wall. A pointed arch recess in the northern chapel may have housed an altar. The southern chapel has a wall niche with a holy water stoup and a niche projects from the wall above the northern two arcade arches that may once have held a holy statue. The central chapel is home of the only cadaver effigy surviving in county Kildare. Its rapidly deteriorating surface bears the images of two cadavers in low false relief with a ringed, fleur-de-lys cross between them. The inscription commemorates James Tallon and Joan Skelton with an incomplete date thought to be 1505.

Excavations in Abbey Street, close to the friary uncovered burials belonging to a cemetery for the medieval town’s community. In addition to this, when part of the nave’s south wall collapsed in 1912, a probable vault was revealed with four burials, one recorded as being in a tomb with moulded jambs.

In the small paddock immediately to the north of the church, a gable wall is all that remains of a chapel that was burned down in 1799. Emerging under the west side of this gable is a holy well dedicated to St James.

Just outside Dublingate, at the northern end of the town, was a Priory of Crouched Friars, founded in 1210 by Walter de Riddlesford and his wife. This acted as a hospital. In 1539 the priory consisted of a church, belfry, dormitory, tower, two halls, three chambers, some land and a watermill. Shortly after this the church was recorded as being roofless and the belfry being used for defence of the town. Most of it was demolished leaving only the square belfry known as the ‘Pigeon House’, which can be viewed from the footpath.

This tower, located in a private garden, has three floors. It has two entrances in the north wall, on the ground and second floors. The first floor has a barrel vaulted ceiling and the small east window has a pointed cusped arch.

In the nineteenth century a vaulted chamber was found underground a short distance to the northwest of the tower, but no other information survives regarding the layout of this site which once had such an important religious and social role in the medieval town.