The Tourist Information Dublin website
[visit
link] tells us:
"St. Audoen's Church is the church
of the parish of St. Audoen in the Church of Ireland and is located close to
what was the centre of the medieval city.
St. Audoen's is the oldest parish
church in Dublin and still used as such.
The church is named after St. Ouen
of Normandy, a saint who lived in the seventh century and was dedicated to him
by the Anglo-Normans, who arrived in Dublin after 1172. The church was erected
in 1190.
The turbulent events of the 16th
century had its effects on the upkeep of the church and in 1630 the church was
declared to be in a decrepit state. The Archbishop, Lancelot Bulkeley,
complained that "there is a guild there called St. Anne's Guild that hath
swallowed up all the church means".
Strenuous efforts were made over
the next few years to repair the roof, steeple and pillars of the building, and
the guild was ordered to contribute its share. Funds were low. In 1673 an order
was made to remove the tombs and tombstones from the church "to preserve the
living from being injured by the dead".
Although many repairs were carried
out to the church and tower over the centuries, finance for the maintenance of
the structures was always a problem, especially in the 18th and 19th centuries.
By 1825, the church building itself was in a ruinous state and few Protestants
remained in the parish to support it. As a result, parts of the church were
closed off or unroofed. As a consequence many ancient tombs gradually crumbled
and memorials were removed or rendered illegible by exposure to the
weather.
The architect Thomas Drew was the
first to draw serious attention to the importance of the church, architecturally
and historically, in 1866. He produced detailed plans of the church for which he
won an award from the Royal Institute of Architects of Ireland, carried out
excavations and drew up a paper on the church and its history. In a booklet
published in 1873 the rector Alexander Leeper urged reroofing and restoration of
the church.
In the 1980s an extensive
restoration of the tower and bells was carried out. In subsequent years St.
Anne's chapel, which had lost its roof and many monuments, was given a new roof
and converted to a visitor reception centre, including an exhibition on the
history of the church.
During conservation works starting
in 1996 an extensive excavation of a small section of the church was carried
out, which contributed greatly to an understanding of the building history of
the church."
The Sacred Destinations website [visit
link] further tells us:
"The following text is excerpted
from the "St. Audoen's Church Visitors' Guide," © OPW, the Office of Public
Works. Numbers in the text refer to locations on the floor plan from the same
source.
St. Audoen's has the distinction of
being the only medieval parish church, retaining any original features, still in
use within the city of Dublin. Situated on the north side of High Street, the
principal street of medieval Dublin, the church is dedicated to St. Audoen or,
in the French version, Ouen, the 7th-century bishop of Rouen and patron saint of
Normandy.
History
On his death on 24th August 684,
Ouen was buried in Rouen, and a great church was built on the site in the
succeeding centuries. The Dublin church of St. Audoen's was built between
1181-1212 while John Comyn was the first Norman Archbishop of Dublin. However, a
9th-century grave slab, now housed in the church porch, suggests that there may
have been an even older church structure on the site.
St. Audoen's, located in the
commercial and industrial heart of medieval Dublin, was to become an institution
very much in the mainstream of the civil and ecclesiastical life of the city.
Early recognition of its status came in 1218 when Henry de Londres, Archbishop
of Dublin, conferred responsibility for St. Audoen's on the treasurer of the
newly-established cathedral of St. Patrick, an association between parish and
cathedral which continues to this day.
By the 14th century the parish of
St. Audoen's had become established as a settled and prosperous entity and the
church was extended in the 15th century.
In the medieval church, private
piety and the desire to ensure the safe arrival of the soul in Heaven after
death led to the foundation of chantries (endowments for the maintenance of
priests) and the endowment of altars. Against this background, the Guild of St.
Anne was established in 1430 in St. Audoen's.
One of the leading politicians of
the time, Sir Roland FitzEustace, Lord Portlester, also founded a private chapel
in St. Audoen's dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary. A cenotaph, erected in
1482 by Sir Roland commemorating both himself and his wife Margaret, shows their
recumbent effigies. The Portlester Tomb, now housed in the tower, would have
been a focal point of his chapel.
In 1773, because of the declining
congregation, the decision was made to remove the roof from the complete eastern
end of the church. Fifty years later, the roof of St. Anne's Chapel was also
removed. In the mid-19th century, the church was further restricted in size when
the present east wall and window were built; the parishioners gaining access
through the tower.
The roofless section of the
building was later vested in the State to be protected as a National Monument,
now under the care of Heritage Services, OPW. Following a programme of
restoration work, St. Anne's Chapel was re-roofed and now houses an exhibition
on St. Audoen's.
What to See
In plan, St. Audoen's is a roughly
rectangular building with long twin aisles. Archaeological evidence and
architectural detail suggest that the needs of a growing parish resulted in the
change from a small single-cell structre, the common accepted prototype of a
medieval parish church, to the large church of the 15th century.
A doorway inserted into the south
wall sometime in the 18th century leads into the south aisle, known as St.
Anne's Chapel.
Features along the south wall of
St. Anne's Chapel bear witness to some of these building developments. A small
piscina (1) for washing sacred vessels and a blocked-up round-arched window
offer clues to the structure of the early parish church.
The small pointed arched doorway
framed in cut sandstone (2) led across a narrow cobbled lane, revealed during
the excavation, to a stone building, possibly the priest's house. This must have
abutted the church at first floor level. The "squint" windows high up on the
south wall would have provided a view from the house to the altar at the east
end of the church.
In the large pointed-arch recess
(3) there was a 15th-century wall painting, now no longer visible, possibly of
the Holy Trinity and St. Anne. The recess was later converted into a sedilia
(seats for the celebrants of High Mass). A second piscina was inserted
nearby.
A large open archway originally
gave access to the tower at the western end of St. Anne's Chapel. Six bells are
currently housed in the bell loft, three of which were cast in the early 15th
century, probably for the newly constructed tower. The tower was heavily
restored in the 17th and the early 19th centuries.
With extra light needed as the
church building was extended in the 15th century, stones from an earlier window
were reused in the large four-light sandstone window which has now been
reconstructed in its original position.
Opposite the entrance to St. Anne's
Chapel, the remains of a cobbled lane (5) were revealed during archaeological
excavation. This ran from the direction of High Street downhill towards St.
Audoen's Arch, a 13th-century gateway in the City Walls.
West of this lane, the foundations
of possible the narrower chancel end of an earlier church were revealed.
Sometime in the 13th century this had been demolished and a new gable wall built
further to the east. The old foundations were used to support the most easterly
of the eight-roll cluster columns. These columns form the now bricked-up
four-bay arcade (6) between St. Anne's Chapel and the present parish church in
the north aisle. This arcade with its moulded pointed arches can best be seen
from inside the parish church.
Later, the church was further
extended eastwards, this time crossing the cobbled lane, which was re-routed
around the western end of the church, the course it takes today. With this
extension, a fifth bay was added to the arcade, using granite and sandstone in
its construction.
The eastern end of the church, now
roofless, appears to be a mid-15th-century extension of the north and south
aisles. This is not in the direct east-west line of the earlier church building,
but turns slightly north-east. This was dictated by surrounding property
boundaries, which were revealed in the archaeological excavation. Four limestone
octagonal columns create a three-bay arcade (7) between these newer
aisles.
The extension of the south aisle,
known as the Portlester Chapel, was well lit by four window openings with
limestone tracery along the south wall and three further windows in the east
wall, all probably 16th-century insertions. A small sandstone doorway (8) was
also inserted into the north wall, giving access to St. Audoen's
College.
The windows in the north wall may
have been inserted as late as the 18th century. Although the east gable window
opening has lost most of its tracery, some fragments of granite survive at the
window base. There is a small ambry (9), or cupboard where the sacred vessels
were stored on the return of the south arcade.
The present Church of Ireland
parish church is in the western end of the north aisle and, up until the recent
restoration work, this was the only roofed portion of the building. The west
doorway from the porch (10) to the nave is deeply moulded in the Romanesque
style of the late 12th century and is the earliest architectural detail in St.
Audoen's.
A fine late-Romanesque font (11)
with a cushion-shaped bowl and scalloped ornament stands inside the doorway. The
window openings in the north wall are part of the 19th-century restoration but
an earlier window with granite tracery can still be seen in the exterior of the
wall.
Many members of Dublin's leading
municipal families of the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries were buried in St.
Audoen's and some of their memorial monuments, both elaborate and modest, still
survive. The recently restored 17th-century wall monuments of the Sparke and
Duff families on the north wall are splendid examples of what the lost monuments
probably were like."