Glendalough: An Early Medieval Monastic Settlement in Ireland
Site at a Glance
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- Country
- Ireland
- Primary era
- Medieval
- Eras represented
- Medieval
- Civilizations
- Irish
- Site type
- Religious
- Remains
- Monastery
On this page25 sections
History
Glendalough is an early medieval monastic settlement and glacial valley in Ireland, founded in the sixth century by Saint Kevin and associated with Celtic Christianity, the Christian traditions that developed around monasteries and abbots in Ireland and other Celtic-speaking regions. The name means “valley of two lakes.” The monastery became a center of religious life, learning, craft production, manuscript work, pilgrimage, and farming, and its surviving buildings largely date from the tenth to the twelfth centuries.
Foundation by Saint Kevin
Saint Kevin, an early medieval Irish Christian ascetic and monastic founder descended from one of Leinster’s ruling families, first came to the valley as a religious retreat. He later returned with a small group of monks and established a monastery near the meeting point of two rivers. His reputation for holiness attracted many followers, and he died around 618.
The community initially occupied an area near the Upper Lake. As it expanded, its principal buildings were established on stony ground below the Lower Lake. Churches, sanctuaries, and other monastic structures developed there, forming the settlement whose remains are visible today.
Growth and ecclesiastical importance
Glendalough flourished for about six centuries. Its annalistic history records the deaths of abbots, attacks on the settlement, Viking raids traditionally placed between 795 and 902, and the plundering of the monastery by “foreigners” in 1176. The wider community included monks, craft workers, manuscript producers, guests, patients, farmers, and a substantial lay population.
The monastery was known for its learned monks and remained an important educational center until about the tenth century. At the Synod of Rath Breasail in 1111, a church council that reorganized diocesan boundaries in Ireland, Glendalough was designated one of the two dioceses of North Leinster. The Book of Glendalough was written there around 1131.
Laurence O’Toole, a twelfth-century Irish churchman, became abbot of Glendalough before serving as Archbishop of Dublin from 1162. He continued to return at times to the solitude of Saint Kevin’s Bed, a cave above the Upper Lake. Laurence died at Eu in Normandy in 1180.
Decline, destruction, and later use
The dioceses of Glendalough and Dublin were united in 1214. Glendalough’s cultural and ecclesiastical importance then declined, although the settlement continued as a local religious center and destination for pilgrims. English forces destroyed the settlement in 1398, after which religious use and local pilgrimage continued among the ruins.
Eighteenth- and nineteenth-century descriptions mention gatherings on Saint Kevin’s feast day, 3 June, some of which were characterized as disorderly. Glendalough also appeared on Abraham Ortelius’s 1598 map of Ireland. The Church of Ireland retains Glendalough as a diocese united with Dublin, with the Archbishop of Dublin also styled Bishop of Glendalough. Since 1969, Glendalough has additionally been a titular see of the Roman Catholic Church, meaning a bishopric retained as an ecclesiastical title without a territorial diocese.
Industrial remains in the valley
Lead mining operated at the head of the valley from the nineteenth century until 1957. In 1859, tunnels were driven between the Glendalough and Glendasan mines, allowing ore to be moved to processing works. The connecting tunnels are now flooded, and an abandoned mining village at the western end of the Upper Lake forms part of the valley’s later industrial landscape.
Remains
The monastic settlement lies between the Lower and Upper Lakes in a valley shaped by glacial action during the last Ice Age. A moraine crosses the valley mouth, while the Poulanass River flows southward and formed a delta associated with the development of the two lakes. The visible settlement includes a gateway, round tower, cathedral, several churches, crosses, cemeteries, and other ruins. Surviving sections of the enclosure walls and internal paving help define the former monastic area, while semi-natural oak woodland and the abandoned mining district extend the archaeological landscape beyond the central ruins.
Gateway and central ecclesiastical buildings
Principal gateway
The principal gateway was built as a two-storey structure with two finely constructed granite arches. Side walls at both ends show that a wooden roof once covered the passage. A cross-marked stone set into the western interior wall indicated a sanctuary boundary and marked the limit of an area of refuge.
Round tower
The round tower, a tall cylindrical Irish church structure used for bells and also for storage or refuge, is built of slate with granite and rises about 30 metres. Its entrance is approximately 3.5 metres above ground level. Six wooden storeys were connected by ladders inside the tower. Four storeys above the entrance had small windows, while the upper storey had four windows aligned with the cardinal directions. The conical roof was rebuilt in 1876 with original stones.
Cathedral
The cathedral is Glendalough’s largest and most important building, and its construction took place in several phases. The earliest surviving part is the nave with projecting wall-ends known as antae. Large slabs reaching the height of the square-headed western doorway were reused from a smaller earlier church.
The choir and sacristy, the room used to store vessels, vestments, and other religious equipment, belong to the late twelfth or early thirteenth century. The decorated chancel arch, eastern window, and northern nave doorway were also made during this phase, with many decorative stones surviving in a worn and fragmentary condition. Beneath the southern choir window are a piscina, a basin for washing sacred vessels, and a wall cupboard or tabernacle.
Kevin’s Cross
A substantial early granite cross known as Kevin’s Cross stands a few metres south of the cathedral.
Priest’s House
The Priest’s House is a small Romanesque building, using the medieval style of massive masonry and rounded arches, with a decorated eastern arch. It was almost entirely reconstructed from its original stones using a sketch made in 1779. Its first function is unknown, although it may have housed a relic of Saint Kevin. Its present name comes from its use by priests during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Churches of the lower settlement
Saint Kevin’s Church
Saint Kevin’s Church, commonly called the Kitchen, originally had a nave with a western entrance and a small circular window in its eastern gable. A choir and sacristy were added later, and the choir’s surviving history forms part of the building’s successive development. Its steep stone roof creates a semicircular vault, and a small round bell tower with a conical cap rises from the western end. A wooden upper floor and an opening to the roof space formed part of the original internal arrangement. Foundations beside the church belong to another early building that may have had a religious function.
Saint Kieran’s Church
The remains of Saint Kieran’s Church were discovered in 1875. The building may have been dedicated to Saint Kieran, founder of the monastic settlement at Clonmacnoise, which became associated with Glendalough in the tenth century.
Saint Mary’s Church
Saint Mary’s Church is among the earliest and best-built churches at Glendalough. It consists of a nave with a later choir. Its granite western doorway has sloping jambs and a massive lintel, while the eastern window ends in a rounded arch and has two badly worn carved heads on its exterior.
Church of the Holy Trinity
The Church of the Holy Trinity is a simple single-nave building with a choir and a finely formed chancel arch. A square doorway in the western gable opened into a later extension, possibly a sacristy. A circular tower or belfry was built above that extension, and the tower collapsed during a storm in 1818.
Saint Saviour’s Church
Saint Saviour’s Church was probably built during the twelfth century, in the period associated with Laurence O’Toole, and is Glendalough’s latest church. Its nave and choir were restored in the 1870s with stones found at the site. The Romanesque chancel arch has three carved orders with heavily ornamented capitals, and the eastern window has two round-headed openings.
Carved decoration at Saint Saviour’s includes a snake, a lion, and two birds holding a human head in their beaks. A staircase in the eastern wall, entered from an adjoining domestic building, probably led to a room above the choir.
Upper Lake churches and sacred enclosures
Reefert Church
Reefert Church stands in a wooded area near the Upper Lake. Its nave and choir date from around 1100, while much of the surrounding masonry is modern. The name derives from Righ Fearta, meaning “burial place of kings.” The church has a granite doorway, a granite chancel arch, and gable corbels that supported roof beams. Two crosses stand to its east, including one decorated with interlaced patterns. Across the Poulanass River are the remains of another small church.
Saint Kevin’s Cell
Saint Kevin’s Cell was built on a rocky ridge above the lake. The stone structure measured about 3.6 metres across, with walls approximately 0.9 metres thick and an eastern doorway. Its foundations survive, and it may have carried a stone roof resembling the beehive huts of Great Skellig.
The Caher
The Caher is a circular enclosure formed by stone walls on level ground between the two lakes. It measures about 20 metres in diameter and has an unknown date. Several crosses surround it and appear to have served as stations along a pilgrimage route. A caher is a stone-walled enclosure whose purpose can vary according to its location and period.
Temple-na-Skellig
Temple-na-Skellig is a small rectangular church on the southern shore of the Upper Lake. Steps from a landing place lead to the building, and a raised platform west of it contains enclosed stone-built spaces that probably served as dwellings. The church was partly restored in the twelfth century. Its features include a granite doorway with sloping jambs, a Latin cross carved into the eastern gable, several simple grave slabs, and three small crosses.
Kevin’s Bed
Kevin’s Bed is a partly artificial cave cut into a rock face about 8 metres above the Upper Lake. It extends roughly 2 metres into the rock and is traditionally associated with retreats by Saint Kevin and, later, Laurence O’Toole. It may have begun as a Bronze Age burial place and may subsequently have been used for a cult associated with Cernunnos, although these interpretations remain uncertain.
Later crosses and the wider valley landscape
The monastic landscape contains later stone crosses as well as the early ecclesiastical remains. One cross dated 1893–1894 consists of a head, shaft, and base. Its five-part symbolism includes animal-head motifs associated with the four evangelists, interlace decoration, and inscriptions on its truncated-pyramidal base. Another complete cross, probably made during the nineteenth century or its later part, has plant ornament in its terminal panels, an IHS symbol at its center, broad folded-band decoration on the shaft, and an undecorated circular element.
At the western end of the Upper Lake, the ruins of an abandoned mining village and the flooded tunnels linking the Glendalough and Glendasan mines preserve the valley’s industrial phase. Together with the oak woodland, lakes, river, glacial landforms, and monastic structures, these features form the physical setting in which Glendalough’s religious and working communities developed.
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