Monasterevin
Evin's monastery, after St Evin, who ran a monastery here at a place called Rosglas; Joyce agrees and gives Ros-glas as green wood
A Kildare town on the Barrow and the Grand Canal, nicknamed the Venice of Ireland for its many bridges. The tenor John McCormack lived at Moore Abbey from 1925, and the 1903 Gordon Bennett Cup, the first international motor race in Ireland or Britain, passed through the town. In 1975 the Herrema kidnapping ended here after a 17-day siege.
Hundreds of stone axe heads found in the river at the town's three crossing points may mark an ancient ford on the Barrow. St Abban founded a settlement at Rosglas and gave it to his protégé Evin, whose famous bell was used for swearing oaths. A Cistercian abbey followed in the 12th century under Dermot O'Dempsey; it was handed to Henry VIII in 1541. The Earl of Essex, who held it, gave his name to Essex Bridge. James I granted the abbey to Sir Adam Loftus in 1613, and it passed by marriage to the Moores, Earls of Drogheda, who laid out the grid of streets. The Grand Canal arrived in 1786 and the Cassidys' distillery thrived on it.
On 25 May 1798 insurgents attacked the town and were routed in Main Street by the local yeomanry cavalry, and Fr Edward Prendergast was later hanged for ministering to them. A new Town Bridge came in 1832, with an aqueduct of 1826 carrying the canal over the Barrow, and the area came through the famine relatively lightly. Gerard Manley Hopkins visited seven times. On 21 October 1975 Gardaí surrounded a house in St Evin's Park where Dr Tiede Herrema was held, and the siege ended with his release on 7 November.
Drawn from the History section of the Wikipedia article on Monasterevin ↗, rewritten here and adding nothing it does not say; licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.
- Kildare · round tower · 10 km
- Lea Castle · castle · 6 km
- Kildare Castle · castle · 10 km
- Rheban Castle · castle · 12 km
- Tinnakill Castle · castle · 13 km
Straight-line distances from the town centre, from each site's documented coordinates.
- Dún Ailinne · The royal site of Leinster: a 13-hectare hilltop enclosure whose vast timber circles were built for ceremonies, then dismantled and burned.
- Rock of Dunamase · A fortress on a rock over the midland plain, sacked by Vikings out of Dublin in 845. Diarmait Mac Murchada is said to have given it with his daughter Aoife to Strongbow in 1170 — a dowry that helped bring the Normans in. Cromwell’s men blew it up in 1650.
- Hill of Allen — Fionn's fort · Almu, the white fortress of Fionn mac Cumhaill and the Fianna. A 19th-century folly now crowns the hill; the quarry has eaten half of it.
All of these are pinned on the Hidden Ireland map.
All towns and cities → · Every town name in Irish · Know Monasterevin better? Add to the story.