Religious house — Augustinian, of Arrouaise nuns in Anneville or Clonard Old

St Mary’s convent at Clonard was founded by Murchad O’Melaghlin, King of Meath, by c. 1144 for Arrouaisian nuns, probably at the behest of St Malachy (Gwynn and Hadcock 1970, 314) in the vicinity of St Finnian’s early monastery (ME047-007----). St Peter’s abbey of Augustinian canons may have been established at the same time (ibid. 163) to provide religious services for the nuns, perhaps by converting St Finnian’s old foundation to a new purpose. St Peter’s continued independently of St John’s Augustinian abbey at Clonard (ME047-022----), which was founded by Hugh de Lacy between 1183 and 1186 (ibid). St John’s was probably a priory of St Thomas’ (DU018-020051-), as the prior of St John’s witnessed grants of land made by de Lacy to St Thomas’ and St John’s is described as the chapter of the Cathedral. The two male houses were united by Bishop Rochford c. 1200 when he was establishing the Augustinian abbey of SS Peter and Paul at Newtown Trim (ME036-0490003-) to serve as the chapter of the Cathedral (ME036-049002-) he was setting up there. The united Augustinian abbey of SS Peter and John and the nunnery did continue at Clonard, and the position of the latter as the mother-house of other Arrouaisian convents was confirmed by Pope Celestine III in 1195. However, the Clonard nunnery lost many of its named associates in the Dublin and Meath area in the following decades, and its affiliates in Connaught were lost to the convent of Kilcreevanty (GA029-096001-) by 1223 (Brady 1960, 6). The names of the Clonard abbesses that are known are Irish, perhaps reflecting its location at the edge of the Pale. In the 14th and 15th centuries both the nunnery and the abbey at Clonard were becoming impoverished. Both were described as ‘insufficient for burdens’ in the ecclesiastical taxation (1302-06) of Pope Nicholas IV (Cal. doc. Ire., 5, 258). In 1384 Johanna, who was already abbess of Clonard, became the abbess of Odder (ME032-078----), and it seems that most of the nuns moved to the Odder house at this time. Although a small community may have been maintained for a time at Clonard, this had been abandoned by the Suppression in 1540 where the site of the church and gardens and 62 acres, the last remnant of the Clonard convent which was now owned by Odder, were leased to Gerald FitzGerald (White 1943, 261). The precise location of the nunnery is not known but it may have been close to the original church of St Finnian (ME047-007----), and it could be associated with the stone structure (dims c. 15m E-W; c. 7m N-S) identified in a remote sensing survey (Gibson 2011, 76) close to the burials (ME047-015----) that were exposed but not removed in 1976 (Sweetman 1978, 15). Compiled by: Michael Moore Date of upload: 9 April, 2015