Cashel Selfcatering
C A S H E L
"Secular and ecclesiastical history combine to make Cashel one of the most
celebrated places in Munster " extract from The Shell Guide to Ireland
In 2010 the Irish government has submitted the Rock of Cashel to UNESCO to be
approved as a World Heritage Site , a recogition much deserved .
Cashel Heritage Town is in the heart of the Golden Vale - and renowned for its quality dairy and food
produce . Tourism has developed over time in slow way and the visitor will experience a vibrant community
that has a agricultural base and many fine dining opportunities and exists and functions in harmony with tourism .
The town rarely gets the time from visitors as they rush to visit the rock in a few hours and rush to
Killkenny , Waterford , or Adare all within 90 minutes of the town.
There are many gems in the town ranging from two other Abbeys - within the town to explore
and no admission charges . St Domnics Abbey - on of the first Dominian Abbeys in ireland and founded by David Mackelly .
Hore Abbey - The Beneditines settled here from Glastonbury at the end of 12th Century and later Cistericansin 1272
From the fourth century, ‘Cashel of the kings’, on St Patrick’s Rock, developed
as the royal seat of the Eoghanacht over-kings of Munster, several of whom
were also churchmen, making the place an important Christian centre. In the
late tenth century, the Eoghanacht dynasty (Mac Carthy) was displaced by Brian
Boru, ancestor of the O’Briens of Thomond, who subsequently became overlord
or ‘high-king’ of the whole of Ireland before his death at the Battle of Clontarf
in 1014.
In 1101, the Synod of Cashel introduced the European ecclesiastical reform
movement to Ireland and King Muirchertach Ua Briain gave Cashel to the Church.
As diocesan organisation emerged, Cashel formally became, with Armagh, head
of one of the first two archdioceses in the country. The site has seen many
building phases the current dramatic ruins on the Rock of Cashel consist of a
round tower, the twelfth-century Romanesque Cormac’s Chapel, the remains of
the thirteenth-century cathedral with fifteenth-century fortification, and some
fifteenth-century domestic building.
The cathedral on the Rock was derelict from the time of its burning by Murrough
O’Brien, Lord Inchiquin, in 1647, until it was re-edified for Anglican worship in
1686. When Theophilus Bolton became Church of Ireland Archbishop in 1729,
he again repaired the cathedral for use, but it was abandoned by his successor
in 1749. The Rock of Cashel, with its evocative ruins and associations, together
with magnificent views over the fertile land of Tipperary, now attracts more
tourists (over 250,000 in 2006) than any other built heritage site in the Republic
of Ireland.
After their initial conquest of Ireland in 1169, the Cambro-Normans were quickly
attracted to Cashel, both by its ecclesiastical prestige and its good land. A planned
urban settlement, which was enclosed by a town wall in the early fourteenth
century, grew up adjacent to the Rock. The existing remains of the Cistercian
Hore Abbey, just west of the Rock, and the Dominican friary in Moor Lane date
from the thirteenth century. Remnants of building from the late medieval period
onwards remain throughout the core of the town but most of the central building
stock is of the eighteenth and, mainly, nineteenth centuries.
It is likely that the basic economic activity in and around Cashel has always
been as it is now – a market centre for the surrounding agricultural area.
Its prestige derived, as it still does for tourists, from the signs of its ecclesiastical
glories. Today Cashel has a population of around 2,500 and a history which
brings many people to the Rock, but the possible attractions in the town itself
are underestimated and underused.
Following the abandonment of the ancient cathedral site on the Rock, the Church
of Ireland Cathedral of St John the Baptist was built in an angle of the early
fourteenth-century town walls of Cashel, on the site of the medieval church of
St John. It is in the grounds of this Georgian cathedral that the Chapter House,
which now houses the Bolton Library, was built in the 1830s.
The intrinsic value of the scholars’ library – the Bolton Library and well worth a visit
by the visitor to the town .The City Walls are intact and in the grounds of the Cathedral .
There are regular concerts and recitals in the cathedral , check at the tourist office for details .