Abbey Lane Cemetery

This is quick cache located at an 18th century graveyard in the heart of Arklow.

This graveyard had its origins as part of the ancient Dominican's 'Priory of Holy Cross' or Arklow Abbey founded in 1263 by Theobald FitzWalter de Boitlier the Norman ancestor of the Butler family and later Lords of Ormond and Ossary. For 275 years, until its suppression in 1539, the Dominican Abbey played a central role in the religious life of Arklow. Throughout the 13th century the abbey had a reputation of sanctity and was a place of pilgrimage to venerate a relic of the True Cross. Following the general suppression of monasteries throughout the kingdom of Ireland from 1540 under the reign of King Henry VIII, Arklow's Holy Cross Abbey slowly fell to pillage and ruin. Nothing now remains of the original fabric of the abbey building, but a substantial portion of the stone work in the older buildings of Arklow probably contains material salvaged from its ruins. The granite cross in the circle may be the only surviving decorative piece from the original structure.

As there are currently 116 memorial stones in the Abbey enclosure the figure of actual burials here could be much more than 12,000 since its foundation, and that is probably to underestimate. The earliest decipherable memorial is a small damaged rounded stone to one Luke Towel (Toole) for February 22, 1716, one of the oldest legible gravestones in County Wicklow. There are 26 memorials over 200 years old in the graveyard.

In the rebellion of 1798 the Abbey Church and its enclosure came under attack during the rebel assault on the town but it survived intact. In 1801, or thereabouts, the silver altar vessels were stolen from the church and according to tradition were buried by the thieves in the adjoining field. They were never recovered and are possibly still somewhere under the modern car park!