Description: Christ Church Cathedral is the elder of the city's two mediaeval cathedrals, the other being St. Patrick’s Cathedral. It is officially claimed as the seat of both the Church of Ireland and Roman Catholic archbishops of Dublin. In practice it has been the cathedral of the Archbishop of Dublin, since the creation of the Church of Ireland at the Reformation. Though nominally claimed as his cathedral, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Dublin uses St Mary’s in Malborough Street, as his pro-cathedral.
Christ Church Cathedral is located in the former heart of mediaeval Dublin, next to Wood Quay, at the end of Dame Street. However, little evidence of that remains.
The cathedral was begun in 1038 by King Sitric Silkenbeard, the Danish Viking King of Dublin, for the first Bishop of Dublin. Henry II attended the Christmas service at the cathedral in 1171, and in the years thereafter, Strongbow and other Anglo-Norman magnates helped to fund a complete rebuilding of Christ Church, comprising the construction of a choir, choir aisles and transepts, the crypt, and three chapels. A further chapel was added in the 1200s and much of the extant nave was built in the 1230s.
In 1300 Archbishop Ferings of Dublin arranged an agreement between the two cathedrals, the Pacis Compostio, which acknowledged both as cathedrals and made some provision to accommodate their shared status.
The cathedral was the location of the coronation of Lambert Simnel in 1487 as 'King Edward VI' a boy pretender who sought unsuccessfully to depose Henry VII of England. In 1493, the Choir School was founded.
Christ Church also contains the largest cathedral crypt in Britain or Ireland, constructed in 1172-1173. Having been renovated in the early 2000s, it is now open to visitors and it contains various monuments and historical features.
One is the oldest known secular carvings in Ireland, two carved statues that until the late eighteenth century stood outside the Tholsel (Dublin's mediæval city hall, which was demolished in 1806). There is also a tabernacle and set of candlesticks which were used when the cathedral last operated (for a very short time) under the Roman rite, when the Catholic King James II, having fled England in 1690, came to Ireland to fight for his throne and attended High Mass in the temporarily re-catholicised Christ Church
Another item worth seeing is the stocks, formerly in Christ Church Place, made in 1670 and used for the punishment of offenders before the Court of the Dean's Liberty (the small area under the Cathedral's exclusive civic authority), moved here in 1870. There are also some historic books and altar goods of the Cathedral
Close