St. Doulagh's Church, County Dublin

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The interior of the 19th century part of the church

Every now and again a heritage site really surprises me. We were out on Friday looking at sites in the North County Dublin / Fingal region, and we really enjoyed visiting the town of Swords with it’s fine round tower and castle. After a lunch stop at Malahide Castle, we decided to stop at a church called St. Doulagh’s that was nearby. We thought it would be a ten minute stop but we were extremely lucky that we bumped into Victor, who works at the site and he gave us a fascinating guided tour of a truly remarkable building. 

The medieval font

St. Doulagh’s is still used as a Church of Ireland place of worship, and on first entering the church it appears as a very nice, but not particularly unusual place, with fine oak vaulting on the ceiling and the stately but welcoming feel typical of a lot of Church of Ireland buildings. However the first clue of the buildings antiquity was the plain medieval baptismal font that is still in use today. And when we were led into the vestry in the old part of the church, the sheer history of the building became very apparent. 

A medieval piscina and fragments of a medieval sculpture in the vestry

A monastery is believed to have been founded here by the little-known, seventh century anchorite hermit Saint Doulagh. However the earliest historical reference to the church dates from the ninth century, in the Martyrology of Oengus. In that text the church is called Duilech Cain Clochair. The site has many of the features of an early medieval monastery, in the 1980s excavations by the archaeologist Leo Swan discovered a number of burials and the enclosure ditches that once surrounded the monastery. 

The church building is a fascinating mish-mash of a number of different periods, and it can be extremely difficult to work out which features date to what period. The eastern end of the building is thought to be the earliest. It has a very steeply vaulted stone roof and has a croft or living quarters for the monks. It is a little reminiscent of the vaulted stone roof of St. Kevin’s Church at Glendalough, or St. Colmcille’s House in Kells. This part of the building is thought to date to the twelfth century, making St. Doulagh’s the oldest stone-roofed church still in use as a place of worship. The tall central tower is thought to have been added in the fifteenth century, and you can access a number of the rooms from the exceptionally narrow spiral staircase

The very narrow spiral staircase

In the entrance hall there is a small ‘hermit’s cell’ which is reputed to be the burial place of St. Doulagh himself. From there you can access the handsome 19th century church that adjoins the older building. 

In the grounds of the churchyard you can find a lovely octagonal building covering St. Doulagh’s Holy Well and it is a charming and atmospheric spot. The interior was covered with frescoes in the early seventeenth century, painted in 1609 by a Mr Fagan, of Feltrim, though Victor the guide informed us that they were destroyed in the aftermath of the Williamite Wars. 

Just behind this well you can find another well dedicated to St. Catherine. It appears as an underground bath enclosed by a rectangular vaulted building, but this one is unfortunately not accessible at present. Just on the outside of the site near the entrance you can find an early medieval plain granite cross on a modern stepped-base. This was said to have been moved from the inside of the churchyard in the late 18th century. 

I strongly recommend a visit to St. Doulagh’s, it is a really fascinating building with a great atmosphere. St. Doulagh’s church is located at Balgriffin, on the Malahide Road, some 600 metres north of Balgriffin Cemetery. It is on the bus route 42 or 43 from Dublin City Centre.

St. Doulagh's Well

The early-medieval granite cross

Tours are available from May to September on Sundays from 2.30pm - 5.30pm. Tours can be arranged at other times for school, families, historical societies and heritage groups by contacting The Friends of St Doulagh's, see their website for more details: http://www.fingaldublin.ie/interior-pages/activities-attractions-amp-conference/castles-churches-and-towers/st-doulaghs-church/

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Some Sources and Further Reading

Baker, C. 2010. Antiquities of Old Fingal (Wordwell, Dublin) 

Harbison, P. 1982. St. Doulagh’s Church (in Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review, Vol. 71, No. 281)