Sometimes God and Nature get it just right!!

Sometimes God and Nature get it just right!!  ... and Our Lady's Island is one of those perfect locations where the peace of Heaven meets our Earth.
  

It is a place that draws one again and again.
It is beautiful and reaches depths deep inside your very soul.
It is quiet,
but not absolute solitude,
as one can still appreciate the natural sounds of the water lapping and the birds as they fly overhead.

It is peaceful,  peaceful almost beyond compare at times
but you never feel totally away from everything or everyone.

It is a place where you instinctively take a breath
and in doing so you leave all your stress behind and your world somehow takes on a calmer and peaceful feeling.

It is my Place ~ 
       It is my Home. 

Situated on an isthmus jutting into Lady's Island lake this group of ruins are positioned in an area long renowned for pilgrimage. .Before the time of the Anglo-Norman landings, the Christian faith was very strong in Co. Wexford. This is evident from the large number of parishes, each with at least one place of worship and one of burial area bearing Irish Names.

Following the Norman Invasions of the late 12th century lands were confiscated and given to the favourites of the Norman leaders. A number of estates came into the possession of Milo De Lamporte and it was he who built the old feudal stronghold in 1195.
The remains of this Tower house built by Rudolph DeLamporte in 1237 continued in use until the Cromwellian invasion in 1649 in which the castle was burnt and plundered and the surrounding lands passed to the Browne family.
Rudolph gave this land to the Church and asked the Canons Regular of St Augustine to take charge of the island. He then went to fight in the Crusades, where he was killed. 

The Tower house today incredibly stands four storeys high .  The North wall of the Castle now has attached to it a modern shrine to Our Lady. There are apparently stairways within the tower that lead to a wall walk which are at present not accessible. 
The entrance to the courtyard is through the arches of a sturdy gatehouse which is attached to the tower and on either side of these structures are fragments of a curtain wall.
A few yards North of the Tower house are the remains of a curtain wall tower which now leans precariously at a 30 degree angle. Surprisingly this has thankfully not been demolished but simply cordoned off by a low fence and left for people to gasp at. It teeters with it's innards exposed and in this particular position is very striking looking indeed. The leaning tower of Lady's island!

At the far end of the courtyard from the main Castle to add to the interest of this area is an ancient graveyard containing the scant remains of the medieval Church of St. Abban. All that is left now is the gable end that housed the Bell.

The ruins are set in a particularly beautiful setting. The lake itself is interesting as it is one of only two of these types of lake in Ireland. The other being Tacumshin Lake. The lake is divided from the sea not by land but by a sand bar and water from the sea frequently seeps through. It is more akin to a Lagoon. 

In a list of Irish place-names published in Iris-Leabhar na Gaeilge in 1903, the Irish name for Our Lady's Island is given as Cluain-na-mBan - 'the meadow of the women'. Considering that this locality was the centre of druidical worship and so it is belivable that Our Lady's Island was in pre-Christian times inhabited by female druids.

Wexford's coastline has always been a gateway to the continent and  and so merchants have come to these shores sharing their faith and beliefs. Tradition has always existed that Our Lady's Island was founded by St Abban, nephew of St Ibar, in the sixth century and its reputation as a place of pilgrimage and of devotion to Our Lady was established by or before the year 600 A.D.
Historical evidence of the pilgrimage was discovered in 1941, when a member of the Druhan family, who lived on the Island, unearthed what appeared to be a coin while ploughing. He brought it to the local curate, Fr Browne, who recognised it as something more than a coin and sent it to the British Museum for inspection.

It was later confirmed that the metal disk was "a leaden Bula of Pope Martinus V (1417-1431). Martin V's Bula granted indulgences to pilgrims."

In October 1649, Cromwell arrived in Wexford and sent out foraging parties around the county. One such party arrived in Our Lady's Island, where many people had gone for sanctuary. The Augustinian priests refused to bear arms against their country. They were murdered, the church was unroofed and desecrated and the castle was burned. Mass has not been celebrated within the walls of the old church since.

Historical Extracts from Our Ladys Island History and Wexfords Web.

Photos via
Wexford Local

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