Qualla: St. Mary's Collegiate Church, Gowran

St. Mary's Collegiate Church, Gowran: Introduction

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Andreas F. Borchert, CC BY-SA 4.0. In the chancel of St Mary's at Gowran stands a piece of stone roughly chest-high, scored down one edge with vertical and slanted notches, and marked across its face with a Christian cross. The notches are ogham - the alphabet used in Ireland from the third or fourth century, the oldest writing system the island ever produced. The cross was carved over the inscription around the sixth century, when the worshippers at this site became Christian without abandoning the stone their ancestors had set up. The stone was used as building material when the church was rebuilt and lost for centuries; it was found again during chancel works in 1826. It is the oldest writing in this building. It is not the only thing here that survived being lost.

Image: Andreas F. Borchert | CC BY-SA 4.0

St. Mary's Collegiate Church, Gowran: The oldest dated burial monument in Ireland

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Sarah777, Public domain. Also in the chancel, on a wall set against the south aisle, is the effigy of a priest in his vestments, his hands folded, his face wearing the calm formal stillness that medieval stonemasons gave to the holy dead. The inscription around the edge is carved in Lombardic capitals in...

Image: Sarah777 | Public domain

St. Mary's Collegiate Church, Gowran: The earls

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Millars, CC BY-SA 4.0. Beginning in 1312 when Edmund Butler, Earl of Carrick and Lord Deputy of Ireland, made an agreement to fund four priests in St Mary's to celebrate masses in perpetuity for his soul and the souls of his family, the church became the burial place of the Butlers of Ormond. Edmund hi...

Image: Millars | CC BY-SA 4.0

St. Mary's Collegiate Church, Gowran: The carved tombs

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit CC BY-SA 3.0. Two mensa tombs - flat table tombs - sit in the church carved with knights in armour. The Single Butler Knight Tomb dates to 1500-1515 and was the first major sculpture commissioned at Gowran. The Two Butler Knight tomb, from 1515-1527, is similar. Both are attributed to the O'Tu...

Image: CC BY-SA 3.0

St. Mary's Collegiate Church, Gowran: 1415, 1421, 1650: what the church survived

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit No machine-readable author provided. Tolivero~commonswiki assumed (based on copyright claims)., Public domain. In 1415 - the year Henry V was at Agincourt - Irish raiders surrounded the church at Gowran and burned it. In 1421 Edward Bruce's army attacked the town and damaged it again. The Pope granted indulgences to those who would give alms for repairs over the next ten years; the tower ...

Image: No machine-readable author provided. Tolivero~commonswiki assumed (based on copyright claims). | Public domain

St. Mary's Collegiate Church, Gowran: The window for Aubrey

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit A.-K. D., CC0. On the north wall of the chancel is a stained glass window dedicated to Aubrey Cecil White of Gowran, who was killed on 1 July 1916 - the first day of the Battle of the Somme - aged 20. He was one of the 19,240 British soldiers killed on that single morning, the worst day in Brit...

Image: A.-K. D. | CC0

St. Mary's Collegiate Church, Gowran: Public access and what you find inside

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Humphrey Bolton, CC BY-SA 2.0. The Gowran Development Association, founded in 1988, restored the church's boundary walls, chancel roof, interior plaster (replastered with traditional lime mortar and goat hair), and the medieval town wall section behind the graveyard. Most of this work was done in the 1990s and...

Image: Humphrey Bolton | CC BY-SA 2.0