Christ Church Cathedral - Dublin, Ireland
N 53° 20.599 W 006° 16.292
29U E 681632 N 5913933
Standing on high ground in the oldest part of Dublin, Christ Church Cathedral is one of the city's finest historic buildings. It is a part of the Anglican Church of Ireland.
Waymark Code: WMFVDV
Location: Dublin, Ireland
Date Posted: 12/03/2012
Views: 22
The Tourist Information Dublin website
[visit
link] tells us:
"At the centre of the city of
Dublin for almost a thousand years, Christ Church cathedral (or more formally,
The Cathedral of the Holy Trinity) has a rich cultural history which can be
traced from the Vikings and the Anglo-Normans to the present
day.
The earliest manuscript suggests
Christ Church cathedral has been in its current location since around 1030.
Dúnán, the first bishop of Dublin and Sitriuc, Norse king of Dublin, founded the
original Viking church, which is believed to have been subject to the archbishop
of Canterbury. By 1152 it was incorporated into the Irish church and within a
decade Archbishop Laurence O’Toole (the first Irish-born bishop of Dublin) had
been appointed.
Extensive renovations were carried
out in Victorian times at a cost of £230,000, equivalent to approximately €26
million in current terms) and while the seriously decayed structure was saved
from collapse, it remains difficult, to tell which parts of the interior are
genuinely medieval and which parts are Victorian pastiche.
The cathedral famously contains the
purported tomb of Strongbow, a medieval Norman-Welsh peer and warlord who came
to Ireland at the request of King Diarmuid MacMorrough and whose arrival marked
the beginning of English involvement in Ireland.
On one wall alongside the Choir is
the famous mummified group of "Cat and Mouse," found trapped behind the organ
and preserved by the very dry air of the cathedral.
Christ Church contains the largest
cathedral crypt (over 63 long) in Britain & Ireland, which was constructed
in 1173.
The crypt contains various
monuments and historical features, including:
the oldest secular carvings in
Ireland, two carved statues that until the late 18th century stood outside the
Dublin's medieval city hall (which was demolished in 1806), a tabernacle and set
of candlesticks used when the cathedral last operated under the Roman rite, when
the Catholic King James II, having fled England in 1690, came to Ireland to
fight for his throne and attended High Mass in the temporarily re-catholicised
Christ Church, and the stocks, formerly in Christ Church Place, made in 1670 and
used for the punishment of offenders before the Court of the Dean's
Liberty."