Home

Who
What
Where
When
Why
Hill of Slane Church
 

County

Meath

Coordinates

N 53° 43' 01.9"   W 006° 32' 34.1"

Nearest town

Slane

Grid Ref.

N 96225 75140

Map No.

43

Elevation a.s.l. (m)

148

Date of visit

Wednesday 8 June 2011

GPS Accuracy (m)

5
Show Google Map              Show Monuments in the area

    
    
    
    
    
    
 
PREVIOUS      NEXT
The friary and the College are atop the Hill of Slane.


We came here late in the evening, after dinner, past 9 pm, and stayed for about half an hour. This was the first time that we visited a site at this time of the day. Generally we prefer to arrive at the sites in the full daylight to get better photos, but this time the sun was almost perfect at its setting and gave the place a wonderful golden colour.
The air was clear and we could see for tens of miles all around.
Anyway we'd like to go back again with more time to look at the many details we had to skip over.

This is the place where in 433 St. Patrick lit up a Paschal fire to challenge High King Laoire who forbid any other fire in Ireland while a sacred fire was burning on the Hill of Tara. Rather than punish him for his affront, Laoire was impressed by Patrick's devotion to his religion and allowed him to continue in his mission.

What we see today are the ruins of a Franciscan Friary church and a Franciscan College, both on the top of the hill and founded by Christpher Flemyng, Baron of Slane.
The Slane Friary was built in 1512 on the site of an earlier monastery, whose origines date back to the end of the 5th century when St. Erc founded it. This first monastery was replaced by a new construction in medieval times.
The outstanding element of the ruins is the gothic tower that is about 19 metres high. The friary was abandoned in 1723.
The College was built at the beginning of the 16th century for priests, lay-brothers and choristers.

We came here for the first time was on May 3rd, 2002.


UPDATE: June 5th, 2017 - A new visit to Hill of Slane, we took some new photos, they are the last 9 photos in this page.


Browse by Monument Type
Browse by County
Browse by Date of Visit
Browse by Map Number

A-Z List

Clickable Counties
Clickable OS Maps Grid

Find a Map

Multimap

The days before GPS

The Stones in the Movies

Glossary
Links
Guestbook
FAQ

What's NEW?


Search


Site view counter: 25042391

Copyright © 1994-2024 Antonio D'Imperio
All the photos, the graphics and the texts on this website are automatically copyrighted to me under the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works 1886. Any violation of the copyright will be pursued according to the applicable laws.

info@irishstones.org

Powered by AxeCMS/CustomEngine(V0.25.00 build 999) by Sergio "Axeman" Lorenzetti. (C) 2009-2015

counter