This ruinous church stands to the east of what would have been the medieval town of Athy, it is known as St Michael’s and dates to the early 13th century. The dedication is probably explained by the Lords of Athy after the Anglo-Norman conquest had the surname St Michael. A Robert St Michael was given the lands by Richard de Clare aka Strongbow and more than likely funded its construction. One of the earliest references is in 1311 when John PouKoc and Alice Heyne were charged with entering the church, “by a window which he first broke” and stealing goods including silver, textiles and foodstuffs from various chests. The church was in ongoing use over the next few centuries and in the Royal Visitation of Dublin (1615) and Archbishop Bulkeley’s Visitation of Dublin (1630) both describe the church as being in good repair. Subsequently it must have suffered some damage in the years that followed as the register of the parish of Athy notes that in 1677 subscriptions for repairing the church were collected. It appears the church was in use into the early 1800s and once it fell into ruin its surrounding lands were converted into a multi-denominational cemetery around 1810 and extended towards the Dublin Road in the 1930s. Interestingly the church is known as the Crucin locally, possible deriving from the old irish ‘Cruc’ which itself comes from the latin ‘Crux’, eventually the word cruc evolved into cros and then crois which is the Irish for Cross. In turn the Irish word ‘ín’ means small or tiny, so perhaps the nickname means Small Cross! Regardless of the origins of the nickname, this is a pleasant ruin and the cemetery holds a whole host of interesting grave markers and headstones.
GPS: 52.9935, -6.97563