’The term ‘hidden gem’ is completely overused at this stage and I’m at pains to employ it but if anything does deserve that clichéd title it has to be St Mary’s Abbey, seeing as it is buried under the modern day surface of Dublin City. This 12th century Chapter House is situated a short distance from the River Liffey on Dublin’s northside and can be visited on Heritage Week and by appointment. According to the Annals of the Four Masters the abbey was founded by the Irish King Máel Sechnaill mac Máele Ruanaid in 846. The earlier abbey was Benedictine, the oldest of all the religious orders in the Latin church but in 1139 it was given to monks belonging to the Congregation of Savigny from Northern France by Malachy O’Morga, in 1147 these monks joined the Cistercian order. It was a significant religious house with lands stretching from the area known as Oxmanstown to the River Liffey and eastwards to where it meets the sea. The abbey also owned large estates around the country. It was one of the ‘liberties’ that were created in Dublin with the arrival of the Anglo-Normans in the 12th century. The order was given the right to claim any goods from shipwrecks off the coast of Ireland and was also allowed to behave as they wished in the lands they owned where ‘hostile Irish’ were an issue without incurring much penalty.

In 1303 a large part of the church and the abbey was destroyed by fire but was soon reconstructed, however it wasn’t long again, 13 years later in fact, before it was blighted by the then Mayor of Dublin, Robert de Nottingham. At that time the Earl of Ulster, Richard Óg de Burgh was visiting the abbey and de Nottingham suspected he had brought Edward Bruce to Ireland. Bruce was at that time making his way to attack Dublin, de Burgh was captured and several of his men killed. The abbey was rebuilt and continued to thrive and prosper, at a meeting of the Privy Council in 1534 Silken Thomas threw down his sword of state and thus started his rebellion against the crown forces of Henry VIII. After the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1539 the abbey was handed over to a John Travers and the church became an arsenal and part of a quarry. In 1619 Sir Gerald Moore received a grant of the abbey with its tithes and lands from King James I and made the Abbey the Moore families’ Dublin residence up to the close of the 17th century. The abbey was further pulled asunder as stone from its ruins were used in 1676 during the building of what was Essex Bridge, now Grattan Bridge that links Capel Street and Parliament Street. The abbey and its lands were used as a dumping ground and 17th and 18th century Dublin grew up on top of it. Two other churches, a synagogue and also Bolands bakery were built on the ruins of the former abbey. It wasn’t until 1880 that an amateur archaeologist rediscovered the abbey 2 metres underground and underneath the bakery.

All that remains of the original Abbey are the chapter house and the slype. The Chapter House was an incredibly significant room in the monastery as it was here where the monks gathered for morning mass and other rituals hence this room was richly decorated. The Slype is a corridor that linked the privacy of the cloister to an open area of the east where usually the infirmary was situated. I was fortunate to visit St Mary’s Abbey as part of Heritage Week 2024 and listened to an excellent lecture by a guide named Ralph who truly embodied the love and enthusiasm that makes these sorts of experiences extra special.

GPS: 53.34752, -6.2694