Holycross, Mainistir na Croise Naofa, Co. Tipperary

Mainistir na Croise Naofa · Co. Tipperary

A Cistercian abbey on the Suir, still in use, still holding what it's always held.

Holycross is a small village on the River Suir, six kilometres south of Thurles. There is a pub beside the abbey, a bridge across the river, and a residential street. What there is not - a hotel, a restaurant strip, a visitor trail with laminated signs - you either accept or you don't come. Most people come anyway, and for one reason.

The abbey is a Cistercian church founded around 1180 by Domnall Mór O'Brien, King of Thomond, to house a relic of the True Cross - said to have been presented to the O'Brien family by Pope Paschal II. It became one of the great medieval pilgrimage sites in Ireland, drawing thousands every year across the Suir and up the path to the gate. The Reformation closed it. By the eighteenth century it was a ruin. By 1975 it was a working parish church again - the most complete medieval abbey restoration Ireland managed in the twentieth century. It is still the parish church. Mass is still said here. The kneelers are still warm.

There is a strange quality to the place on an ordinary Tuesday. The gothic stonework is intact. The Norman carvings in the nave - the Butler tomb, the sheela-na-gig above the sedilia - are the same stonework pilgrims touched in 1400. The River Suir runs outside the wall. A heron usually stands in it. The silence is not performed; it is what happens when the tour groups leave and the building goes back to being itself.

Population

715

Pubs

2and counting

Walk score

Abbey, bridge, river - done in 40 minutes

Founded

c. 1180 (abbey)

Coords

52.6344° N, 7.8650° W

01 / 07

At a glance.

Three things every local will eventually mention. Read these and you've already understood more than most day-trippers do.

01 The abbey

Eight hundred years of continuous pilgrimage.

Founded c. 1180, suppressed at the Reformation, left to the crows for three centuries, then brought back. It reopened for Mass on 5 October 1975 - the most complete medieval abbey restoration in Ireland.

Stories & lore → 02 The bridge

Eight arches. Six hundred years.

The limestone bridge over the Suir was built around 1410. Rebuilt in 1626. Widened around 1750. Stand on it long enough and you start doing the maths on everything else in your life.

Walks & outings → 03 The relic

A fragment said to be the True Cross - stolen, recovered, returned.

On 11 October 2011 three men with an angle-grinder cut it from its cabinet. Gardaí recovered it in January 2012, undamaged. It is back in the abbey now. People still come to see it.

Stories & lore →

02 / 07

The pubs.

None of these are themed Irish pubs, because they don't need to be. A few that earn the trip:

Glasheen's Old Abbey Inn

Post-pilgrimage pint, open fire

Pub & bar food

Right beside the abbey gate on the river bank. Once the abbey's own guest house, now Glasheen's. Bar food seven days, carvery lunch Monday to Friday, open fire in winter. The pint after the abbey tour is the correct order of events.

The Wytchway Inn

Locals, weekend dining

Pub & restaurant

A kilometre from the village centre at the Bohernacrusha crossroads. Closed Monday to Wednesday; open Friday, Saturday and Sunday from noon. The food leans local and the portions do not pretend otherwise. Ring ahead - (0504) 43117.

03 / 07

Stories & lore.

The reason to come back. The things every local will eventually tell you about, usually after the second pint.

What the village is named for

The relic

The story begins with a fragment of wood - said to be part of the cross on which Christ was crucified - presented by Pope Paschal II to the O'Brien kings of Thomond around the early twelfth century, as reward for their work reforming the church in Ireland. The abbey was built to house it. For three centuries the pilgrims came, crossing the Suir in their thousands, wealthy enough to fund the elaborate stonework you can still see in the nave. The Reformation ended that. The relic disappeared from the records. When the Vatican authenticated a new relic for the restored abbey in 1977 - from St Peter's Basilica in Rome - it was the second time in its history that Holycross had formally received one. The first was eight hundred years before.

11 October 2011

The theft

Three men arrived at the abbey in the early evening. Two went inside with an angle-grinder, a hammer, and a screwdriver. They forced the steel cabinet open and took both reliquaries - the authenticated Vatican relic and the cross containing it. They were outside and in a wine-red Volkswagen Touareg inside a few minutes. The vehicle was found burned out. The gardaí said almost nothing publicly for three months. Then in January 2012 they announced the relics had been recovered, undamaged, and the abbey held a celebration Mass on 19 February. No one has ever explained who had them or where they had been. The relic went back into its case. The cabinet has a better lock now.

How a ruin became a parish church

The restoration

After the Reformation, Holy Cross Abbey spent three centuries as a roofless shell. Local people took stones for field walls and houses. What survived did so by indifference rather than care. In the 1960s a local priest, Willie Hayes, decided the thing to do was restore it entirely rather than consolidate the ruin. The Office of Public Works agreed. Archbishop Thomas Morris raised the money. Restoration work ran from 1970 through 1975 - five years of archaeological investigation and structural repair that put back the roofs, the windows, the cloister. The abbey reopened for Mass on 5 October 1975. It was the most ambitious medieval church restoration the country had seen. It is still a working parish church. It does not feel like a museum.

Inside the north transept

The butler tomb

The Butler tomb in the north transept dates from the fifteenth century and is carved with an effigy of a knight in full armour - the detail of the chain mail still crisp after six hundred years. The Butlers were the dominant Anglo-Norman family of Tipperary, Earls of Ormond, and they used the abbey as a prestige burial site. The monument survived the Reformation intact, which tells you something about either the thickness of the walls or the wariness of the people who came to loot them. Either way it is here, in a working church, still in the place it was made for.

04 / 07

Things to do outside.

Wear waterproofs. Bring a sandwich. Tell someone where you're going if it's the mountain.

Abbey and bridge loop The core circuit: through the abbey grounds, out to the eight-arch bridge over the Suir, along the river bank back to the car park. Do the interior first. The stonework takes longer than you think.

2 kmdistance

40 mintime

Suir Blueway (Holycross section) The Suir Blueway canoe and walking trail runs through the village. The stretch north toward Thurles follows the river bank through open farmland. No hills, no drama - just the river and the herons.

5 km one way to Thurlesdistance

1.5 hourstime

05 / 07

When to go.

There is no bad time. There are different times.

Spring

Mar-May

Quiet. The abbey is at its least crowded. Holy Week brings pilgrimage services that are worth arriving for specifically.

◉ Go

Summer

Jun-Aug

Coach tours arrive mid-morning and leave by three. Come early or come after four. The light on the stonework in late afternoon is the light the thing was built for.

◐ Mind yourself

Autumn

Sep-Oct

The coaches thin out. The river is running. The interior is cool and dim and largely empty. The right season.

◉ Go

Winter

Nov-Feb

The abbey is open year-round. A December visit - no tour groups, the Wytchway's kitchen running on weekends, an open fire in Glasheen's - is not a hardship.

◉ Go

06 / 07

What to skip.

Honestly? Don't bother.

If a local was sitting beside you, this is the bit where they'd lean in.

Arriving between 11am and 2pm in July

Three coaches in the car park, forty people in the nave at once, and you spend the visit watching someone else's selfie stick. Come early or come late.

Expecting a village with things in it

Two pubs, no hotel, no restaurant strip. That is the village. The abbey is the reason. If you need a full afternoon's worth of other things to do, base yourself in Thurles six kilometres north and drive down.

Getting there.

By car

Thurles to Holycross is 6km south on the R660 - about ten minutes. Cashel is 15km to the southwest. From Dublin, take the M7/M8 to Cashel, then the R660 north. Free car park beside the abbey.

By bus

BK Bus 394 runs Thurles to Clonmel via Cashel and Holycross. TFI Local Link Tipperary also runs the Thurles-Holycross route twice weekly. Thurles is the practical base.

By train

Thurles station is on the Dublin Heuston-Cork main line - frequent services in both directions. From Thurles, taxi or bus to Holycross (6km).

Next on the tour

Co. Tipperary

Thurles

Six kilometres north. The cathedral town, the GAA heartland, the train station. Base yourself here if Holycross is the day trip.

Co. Tipperary

Cashel

Fifteen kilometres southwest. The Rock of Cashel on its limestone outcrop - the other great medieval site in Tipperary, and a logical same-day pairing.

Co. Kilkenny

Urlingford

Cross the county line into Kilkenny. A quiet market town on the old coaching road, and the start of a different kind of Tipperary border country.

Co. Tipperary

Moycarkey

Two kilometres south of the abbey, and seven from the birthplace of the GAA - it shows.