Parish of Kilmahuddrick

(i.e., the Church of Cudrick or Cuthbert).

This Parish is returned in the seventeenth century as containing the townland of Kilmahuddrick, and now consists of the same.

The only object of antiquarian interest is the ruined church. **

Kilmahuddrick**

This parish, which is the smallest in the metropolitan county, lies, like the parish of Kilbride, to the east of the parish of Kilmactalway, but more to the north, and is separated from the parish of Kilbride by a narrow piece of Clondalkin parish.

The lands belonged to the Abbey of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Dublin. In 1294, it is stated that the monks at Kilmahuddrick were unable to bear any charges, and at the time of the dissolution of the Abbey in 1539 the possessions of the Abbey at Kilmahuddrick are returned as a house and some fifty acres of land held by one Patrick Holder.

In addition the Abbey owned close by the Grange of Ballichelmer, or New Grange, which contained two houses as well as cottages and some hundred and fifty acres of land. Towards the close of the sixteenth century Kilmahuddrick was assigned by the Crown in augmentation of the salaries of the secretary’s office, and in 1591 enquiry was directed as to the reason this order had not been carried out.

In the seventeenth century the lands of Kilmahuddrick and New Grange came into the possession of the Sedgraves of Cabra. In 1650 we find New Grange occupied by a farmer called Nicholas Wolverston and twenty other persons, including a weaver and a “greymerchant,” and in 1666 the lands of Kilmahuddrick were held by Patrick Thunder. **

Ecclesiastical History**

The** **ruined church of Kilmahuddrick, which stands about a mile to the north-west of the village of Clondalkin, although devoid of ornamental features and mainly of late fifteenth century work, is of considerable interest. It stands in the middle of an open field, and the ground round it has been raised considerably by burials.

It consists of a nave and chancel with a broad pointed arch, not bonding into the nave walls which abut against it, and with sockets for a screen or rood beam. The building is extremely off the square. The chancel varies from nineteen feet three inches at the northern, to twenty feet one inch at the southern wall, and is fourteen feet two inches wide. The nave varies similarly from twenty feet ten inches to twenty-one feet four inches, and is seventeen feet wide. The walls are also of varying thickness.

The features are of little beauty. In the east wall of the chancel there are a slightly pointed high recess, an east window with slightly arched light and splay, and a low ambry. The south window has a tomb recess under the sill; the northern light is, like the southern, a mere slit. Next the chancel arch there were two arched recesses, the northern sufficiently perfect to show the remains of a window, the southern fallen. The nave has a slit light to each side of a little ambry, like the two in the south-east angle of the chancel, and a door and slit in the west end.

The latter is to the south of the door, and may have been a “hagioscope,” as it looks towards the altar. It does not (as elsewhere has been stated) command the door. The upper part of the west end above the door has been rebuilt with a thinner wall. The upper part of the side walls adjoining it were also rebuilt. There was a light above the west door.

The church was dedicated to St. Cuthbert, and it has been stated in a very authoritative manner that Kilmahuddrick was the birth place of St. Cuthbert of Lindisfarne, but on this theory modern research has thrown doubt. The earliest record respecting the ecclesiastical history of the place is a deed executed in 1186, which records that by amicable arrangement Master Osbertus, of Clondalkin, gave up to St. Mary’s Abbey all right which he and his church had to the lands of Balichelmer and to the chapel and tithes there.

Subsequently, in 1220, the church of Kilmahuddrick was stated to be in the gift of the Archbishop of Dublin, and in 1540 the church of St. Cuthbert of Kilmahuddrick, being insufficient for the support of a clergyman was, together with what was then styled the parish of Newgrange, united to Clondalkin-an arrangement that, with an unimportant exception when it was united to Tallaght, has since continued.

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