Digital Content From: Irish Historic Towns Atlas (IHTA), No. 7, Maynooth Author: Arnold Horner Editors: Anngret Simms, H.B. Clar
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Digital content from: Irish Historic Towns Atlas (IHTA), no. 7, Maynooth Author: Arnold Horner Editors: Anngret Simms, H.B. Clarke, Raymond Gillespie Consultant editor: J.H. Andrews Cartographic editor: K.M. Davies Printed and published in 1995 by the Royal Irish Academy, 19 Dawson Street, Dublin 2 Maps prepared in association with the Ordnance Survey of Ireland and the Ordnance Survey of Northern Ireland The contents of this digital edition of Irish Historic Towns Atlas no. 7, Maynooth, is registered under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial 4.0 International License. Referencing the digital edition Please ensure that you acknowledge this resource, crediting this pdf following this example: Topographical information. In Arnold Horner, Irish Historic Towns Atlas, no. 7, Maynooth. Royal Irish Academy, Dublin, 1995 (www.ihta.ie, accessed 14 April 2016), text, pp 1–12. Acknowledgements (digital edition) Digitisation: Eneclann Ltd Digital editor: Anne Rosenbusch Original copyright: Royal Irish Academy Irish Historic Towns Atlas Digital Working Group: Sarah Gearty, Keith Lilley, Jennifer Moore, Rachel Murphy, Paul Walsh, Jacinta Prunty Digital Repository of Ireland: Rebecca Grant Royal Irish Academy IT Department: Wayne Aherne, Derek Cosgrave For further information, please visit www.ihta.ie St Patrick's College and Maynooth Castle, c.1800 (College view) MAYNOOTH Maynooth, once the seat of the great earls of Kildare, later an estate village The impression that comes through, albeit indistinctly, from late medieval of the dukes of Leinster, and now a burgeoning college and commuter town, rentals and other surveys — notably those of 1328, 1451 and 1541 — is that, lies some 24 km west of Dublin and is situated within the catchment of the although its castle was strong and significant as the chief fortress of the earls of River Liffey. The west-east flowing Rye Water, the principal tributary of the Kildare (as the FitzGerald owners became in 1316), Maynooth was otherwise Liffey and for several centuries a major boundary between the Early Christian comparable in scale, landholding structure and economic activity to many other kingdoms of Leinster and Brega (Meath), is 2 km to the north. The Liffey itself small manoriaAtlasl villages in the late medieval Dublin hinterland. The 1328 is 6 km to the south-east at its nearest point (Map 1). The surrounding area is assignment of dowry describes a castle complex that included a stone castle, a developed on Carboniferous limestone, usually overlain by several metres of hall with kitchen partly built from stone, a thatch-covered hall with a shingle- glacial drift, and is part of a much more extensive region of gently undulating, covered room, a bake-house, a barn (grange), cow-byre, stable, gardens and fertile lowland which stretches north across Meath to the Boyne valley and 'that space between the castle gate and the wall beside the water reaching beyond, and which reaches south-east to the foothills of the Wicklow towards the north with free entry and exit towards the highway (stratam) of Mountains and south into the Barrow valley. Westwards, this region becomes Maynooth'.5 There is also mention of two mills. Contemporary lists give the more broken by the extensive tracts of lowland bog that reach across the central names of over 50 tenentes ville de Mainoth, including 8 holdings of free midlands to the Shannon and beyond. Particularly in late medieval times the tenants, 20 'farmers' (firmarii), 9 cottagers (cotagahi), and 16 holdings of 6 area to the west was a marcher zone on the edge of the Dublin-centred PaleTowns, betaghs (betagii). In contrast to the first three groups, the betaghs all have which was always under Anglo-Norman and later English control and for clearly Irish surnames. Among the farmers and cottagers, one was a merchant which Maynooth Castle was a principal fortress. and nine others appear to have been craftsmen: two tailors, two cobblers, a In the immediate vicinity of the town relief variation is minimal, ranging bakerAcademy, a farrier, a smith, a mason and a crossbowman. The low rents paid by across only some 6 m within a 1 km radius. The low point is on the bank of the most of these men, and a few others without a named trade, presumably Lyreen, a 6 km long tributary of the Rye Water. The oldest surviving part of the indicate that they held little land and were primarily village-based. There is, town, the castle area, is at the junction of the Lyreen and a yet smaller tributary however, no direct information on precisely where any of the tenants lived. which has no modern name and is referred to below simply as 'the Lyreen Over 50 landholdings are also listed and related to the villa of Maynooth in tributary'.1 These streams are not deeply incised and neither now appears to both the rental of 1451 and the extent of 1541. In 1451 the categories of free represent a significant impediment. But their confluence provideIrishs an tenant and betagh are no longer used, but thirteen landholdings are listed as opportunity for the natural moating of at least two sides of a defensible site, and belonging to farmers, the majority of them with names of Anglo-Norman or Historic 7 this may have been a significant consideration in the initial development of this English origin. There were fifty-four messuages and cot-lands (mesuagia et particular location. Precisely when that development occurred is unclear. An cotagia), and the lands of the lord of the manor, comprising some 320'/2 acres, Anglo-Norman castle was built on the site in the late twelfth century, but had were divided into sixty-seven mostly small units held by fifty-nine named the site been occupied before that? The general area around Maynooth was persons, about three-quarters of whom appear to have names of Irish origin. In known as Mag Nuadat in Early Christian times, mag meaning an open plain and 1541 much less detail is given on the subdivision of the lord's land, but on other Nuadat being an early legendary figure in the folk tradition of the Leinstermen.2 land the existence of seven large tenancies as well as 52'/2 cot-lands is noted.8 Nearby sites associated with thIrishe Early Christia nRoyal period include the monastic A further nine cot-lands were waste and unoccupied as a result of the siege of centres of Laraghbryan 1 km to the west, Taghadoe 2 km to the south and the castle during the rebellion of Silken Thomas in 1535. The personal names Donaghmore 2 km to the east. In the second half of the ninth century the area of well over half of the cot-land occupiers are of Irish origin. On other may have come under the aegis of the Scandinavian kingdom of Dublin,3 and townlands of the manor, the vast majority of the named occupiers are now Irish. eventually it was included in the diocese of Dublin. None of this activity is From this — admittedly patchy — evidence it may be suggested that, although directly associated with the site of Maynooth town, but it does offer evidence in total numbers the landholding units around Maynooth remained relatively that the area was territorially organised, occupied and at least partly cleared constant between the fourteenth and the sixteenth centuries, the composition of well before the arrival of the Anglo-Normans, although a 'wood of Maynooth' the inhabitants (or landholders) may have altered from predominantly Anglo- still existed in the seventeenth century.4 Taking the frontier significance of the Norman or English to predominantly Irish. nearby Rye Water in conjunction with this general settlement context, it seems During the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries the power of the earls worth speculating on the possibility of a defended site predating the Anglo- of Kildare was at its height and countrywide, with the eighth earl (Garret Mor) Norman castle. and his son (Garret Og) both serving long periods between 1477 and 1534 as Documentary references to Maynooth become more frequent from the late the king's lord deputy in Ireland. The castle at Maynooth acted as the centre- twelfth century and the arrival of the Anglo-Normans. In 1176 Richard de point of Kildare influence and innovation. Already enlarged in 1426, it became Clare, the former earl of Pembroke (Strongbow), is said to have granted the 'one of the richest earl's houses under the crown of England', boasting among district around Maynooth to Maurice fitz Gerald, who then erected a castle. A its possessions a famous library. When the king granted a licence for the new grant of 'Magnoded' and other lordships was made by the Lord John in the establishment of the College of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Maynooth in 1515, 1180s and it was presumably from about this period that the district became the earl built the college 'in a most beautiful form'. He placed there a provost, integrated as the manor of Maynooth within the Anglo-Norman landholding vice-provost, 5 priests, 2 clerks and 3 choristers to pray for his soul, and that of system. Whether founded as part of the formal manorial structures or emerging his wife.9 For a brief period the prospect existed that castle and college together by a more informal process, some sort of settlement developed near the castle. might become a base for renaissance culture in Ireland. But this faded abruptly A chapel, which to judge from a seventeenth-century plan was probably part of in the 1530s with the decline in Kildare influence after the rebellion of Silken the castle complex, was in existence in 1248, when the nearby parish centre of Thomas and with the suppression of the religious houses, including the college.