Qualla: St Mary's Collegiate Church, Youghal

St Mary's Collegiate Church, Youghal: Introduction

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Will McGoldrick, CC BY-SA 3.0. Run your hand along the gothic pillars and you can still find them: small carved marks left by the master stonemasons of four local guilds who rebuilt the church in the early 13th century. They were signing their work. Eight hundred years later their signatures remain in the stone, while the names of the men who paid them - earls, bishops, kings - have largely been forgotten. St Mary's Collegiate Church in Youghal is one of three surviving 13th-century gothic churches in County Cork. It is also one of the few medieval Irish churches still in continuous use for worship. Walter Raleigh prayed here. So did Cromwell. So, on a Sunday morning today, do the parishioners of the Anglican congregation that has occupied the building since the Reformation.

Image: Will McGoldrick | CC BY-SA 3.0

St Mary's Collegiate Church, Youghal: Earlier Churches Underneath

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Xx78900, CC BY-SA 4.0. Local tradition holds that Declán of Ardmore - the saint who reputedly arrived in Ireland before St Patrick - founded an early monastic church on this site in the mid-5th century. A Romanesque rebuild followed around 750, and the current church dates to roughly 1220, with traces ...

Image: Xx78900 | CC BY-SA 4.0

St Mary's Collegiate Church, Youghal: Our Lady's College of Yoghill

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Kieran McCarthy, CC BY-SA 4.0. On St John's Day - 27 December - in 1464, Thomas FitzGerald, 7th Earl of Desmond, and Lord Deputy of Ireland, founded a college at the church. He called it Our Lady's College of Yoghill, and its purpose was to train seminarians for the priesthood. Eight Fellows and eight singing ...

Image: Kieran McCarthy | CC BY-SA 4.0

St Mary's Collegiate Church, Youghal: Raleigh's Parish

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Public domain. Sir Walter Raleigh served as Mayor of Youghal in 1588 and 1599, and lived in the Warden's Residence beside the church - the house now known as Myrtle Grove. He had owned the church and the surrounding land since the confiscations following the Desmond Rebellion. In 1596 he sold h...

Image: Public domain

St Mary's Collegiate Church, Youghal: Berkeley, Wesley, and a £1 Organ

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit The Speckled Bird, CC BY-SA 4.0. The 18th century brought a different kind of guest. George Berkeley, the bishop and philosopher whose theory of immaterialism shaped early modern thought, took up residency as Warden of the College in 1734 and conducted services here. John Wesley, founder of Methodism, attended D...

Image: The Speckled Bird | CC BY-SA 4.0

St Mary's Collegiate Church, Youghal: Burials and Daily Life

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Xx78900, CC BY-SA 4.0. Richard Boyle, 1st Earl of Cork, is buried in the churchyard. So are generations of Anglican parishioners. In the late 1980s a small chapel was created in the north transept using furnishings rescued from the closed church of Templemichael; because St Mary's itself is dedicated t...

Image: Xx78900 | CC BY-SA 4.0