Cashel and Cahir – christineswalkabout

I have had a very quiet day today, with a lot of rest, correspondence with friends and family, time spent just doing nothing, and time spent catching up on my blog. I’m almost caught up!

This morning, after my first “full Irish fry” breakfast of bacon, sausage, egg, toast, and white pudding at my very nice bed and breakfast, I headed out early to take a few photos of the very pretty and colourful town of Cashel.

One of my favourite buildings is Fahy’s where I had a tasty lunch yesterday when I first got into town…

and I had a nice fish and chip dinner at “The Brian Boru”. Notice the “Bookmaker” to the left!

After taking my morning photos, I caught the 10:05 Bus Eireen bus on the Main Street to travel 20 minutes south to another very pretty and colourful town, Cahir.

Did you notice the castle on the left in the centre shot? The Anglo-Norman castle at Cahir sits right in the middle of town, built on an island in the center of the River Suir. Begun in the year 1142, the castle underwent several expansions and renovations in the 13th, 15th, and 17th centuries. It is one of the few early Anglo-Norman castles in Ireland that is in not in ruins, having only once been taken, after only a 3 day siege, during the Elizabethan wars. The castle escaped destruction in 1650 when the Lord of Cahir surrendered to Oliver Cromwell rather than fight what would have been a losing battle.

I was blessed with a sunny day again, and there were few tourists at the castle so it was very pleasant to walk all over the castle grounds, up spiral staircases into the rooms of the keep, deep down to the musty well, and up to the top of a round tower. Again, there was an excellent, free guided tour by Heritage Ireland, a film recounting the history of Cahir castle and other Irish castles, and many interpretive displays.

Here are a few photos of the castle exterior.

As well as some photos from inside the grounds and some interior shots.

Partway up the wall you can see a cannon ball, stuck there since the siege in 1599!

In the banquet hall, there is a set of antlers from the extinct Giant Elk. Thought to be between 9000 to 12000 years old, the antlers were found preserved in a peat bog.

From atop a round tower one can see up one side of the main street, and down the other.

After my time in the castle, I strolled down river a little ways to where there was a flotilla of beautiful white geese, including five gostlings. I had watched three young teen boys earlier, up on the main street near the castle, looking like they were up to no good. As I was having my lunch by the river, watching the geese, the boys strutted by on the opposite shore, full of negative energy. Then one of them found some spilled grain which he threw at the geese rather disrespectfully and the other two joined in, but within a just a few moments their coolness and toughness and disrespect melted away before my eyes and they became young boys again, innocent and kind and gentled by the act of feeding the geese, wanting the geese to eat from their hands. It was something to see! When the grain was done, they put their toughness back on like jackets and sauntered off again. I felt sad for them, (though happy that they had had that moment, by the river, in the sun, being kind) and I wished with all my heart that this part of their growing-up years will pass safely and without harm for them.

I headed back to Cashel, and decided to have a restful, restorative afternoon and evening. Thank you for reading.

On my day of departure from Glendalough, I woke early to catch the 7:15 St. Kevin’s coach bus from Glendalough to Dublin. It was very nice to just sit and relax and look at the green countryside and the small towns that we passed through on our way north, back to Dublin.

Dropped off at St. Stephen’s Green, I made my way on foot through the busy city center to the main bus station, Busaras, to catch a Bus Eireen coach bus (the Irish equivalent of Greyhound, but nicer!). Online, I had bought an “Open Road” pass for 6 days of unlimited travel out of 12 consecutive days, which worked out be a little less expensive than buying individual tickets to my planned destinations. Bus Eireen has routes all over Ireland to the major towns and many smaller ones as well. It is an excellent way to travel and eliminates the stress of renting a car and driving on the left!

After two hours of southwesterly travel, out of Dublin and its suburbs and into the beautiful, rolling, agricultural county of Tipperary, the bus arrived at the very pretty town of Cashel, dominated, of course, by the Rock of Cashel.

Built atop a mound of limestone rock that rises dramatically from the Tipperary plain are the ruins of five ecclesiastical buildings. Associated with the High Kings of Munster since the 4th century as a defensive fortress and a place of coronation and ceremony, the rock first became associated with Christianity in 450 AD with the conversion of the Munster king Aenghus by St. Patrick. In 1101, another High King of Munster gifted the land to the Church.

The oldest building on the site is the round tower, build around 1100 AD.

The second oldest building, begun in 1127, is Cormac’s chapel. It was built in the Hiberno-Romanesque style with rounded arches and painted frescoes. Unlike the other buildings which are made of limestone, Cormac’s chapel was built with sandstone which erodes more easily. The scaffolding on site has been in place to act as weatherproofing for the chapel during its repair, restoration, and protection from further damage by weathering.

The next building on site is the large St. Patrick’s Cathedral, built between 1235 and 1270 in the gothic style with high windows and pointed arches.

In the next photo, the tower is on the left, the cathedral in the center, and to the right of the cathedral is part of the remains of a residential castle built for the archbishops.

During a storm sometime in the mid 1800s, after the site had already been abandoned, this large piece of tower fell from the bishops castle onto the ground below. Thunk!

Here are a few other photos from around the site, and of the surrounding countryside.

And here is a collage of celtic designs carved on lichen-covered crosses in the cementary.

I spent quite a long time on the rock. There was an excellent, free guided tour as well as a film, both of which gave alot of historical context to the site. One visitor asked about the modern dates she had seen on some of the gravestones and the guide said that, when the site was given over to the state and deconsecrated in the 1930s, no more burials were to take place. But, the people of the town of Cashel were unhappy about that and negotiated the creation of a registry of their names, and their childrens’ names, whereby persons on the registry had the right to be buried on the rock. The guide added that there are currently only 3 names left on the registry, and so there will be only three more burials on the Rock of Cashel.

After my visit to the Rock of Cashel, I headed down the hill towards the ruins of Hore Abbey, a 12th century Cisctercian monastery which sits abandonded in a field below the Rock of Cashel, surrounded, on the day I visited, by grazing Irish cattle.

Henry the Eight ordered the dissolution of all the Catholic monasteries in his realm when he made himself the head of the Church of England in the 1530s. He rather conveniently confiscated their considerable lands, wealth, and treasures, and ordered that their buildings be ruined.

Here are just a few photos of Hore Abbey. I really like the first one which is of the center of a high vaulted ceiling. I had a quiet time sitting on one of the cloister walls as the rain came and chased away the few others visitors who were there.

Another day filled with history in ancient and beautiful Ireland!

Category: Cashel and Cahir

Cashel and Cahir Castle

The Rock of Cashel, and Hore Abbey