THE
BENEDICTINE NUNS
& KYLEMORE ABBEY
A HISTORY
THE
BENEDICTINE NUNS
& KYLEMORE ABBEY
A HISTORY
Deirdre Raftery & Catherine KilBride
First published in 2020
Irish Academic Press
10 George’s Street
Newbridge
Co. Kildare
Ireland
© Deirdre Raftery and Catherine KilBride, 2020
9781785373220 (Cloth)
9781785373244 (PDF)
9781788551519 (Kindle)
9781788551526 (epub)
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
An entry can be found on request
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
An entry can be found on request
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved alone, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
Unless otherwise stated, all images are courtesy of the Kylemore Abbey Archives, except pp. 28–37, 60–79, 112–29, 160–71 and 198–9, where images are courtesy of Michelle Cooper-Galvin and Diarmuid Galvin.
Design and setting: edit+ www.stuartcoughlan.com Cover design: edit+ www.stuartcoughlan.com Typeset in Adobe Garamond Pro
CONTENTS
THE JOURNEY TOWARDS KYLEMORE, 1914–1920
CONNEMARA AND KYLEMORE IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
THE BENEDICTINES AT KYLEMORE ABBEY, 1920–1959
GROWTH AND CHANGE AT KYLEMORE ABBEY, 1959–2019
PREFACE
This book provides an account of the Irish Benedictines and Kylemore Abbey. While the book locates the history of this monastery within wider Benedictine history, reaching back to the seventh century, it pays particular attention to how the ‘Irish Dames’ were first established in 1665. Their monastery in Ypres, founded at a time when Catholics in Ireland were being persecuted for their faith, became a place that educated generations of Irish girls and women. When the Irish Dames of Ypres were forced to leave Belgium during the First World War, they made their way to Ireland – firstly to Wexford, and then to what would become their permanent home in Connemara.
The book is based on research at Kylemore Abbey Archives, the Natio- nal Archives of Ireland and the National Library of Ireland. It attempts an evidence-based account of the history of the Irish Benedictines, of their journey to Kylemore and of the hundred years they have spent there. A serious difficulty for any scholar working on the history of the Ypres monastery is that archival records were destroyed during the First Battle of Ypres; only a handful of treasures were saved from the monastery. The nuns, however, kept a journal as they travelled from Ypres in 1914 to Kylemore in 1920. Useful sources for the Kylemore part of this book were the Council Minutes, Chapter Minutes and extant records of Kylemore Abbey School. These, together with official publications from the Department of Education and selected newspaper records, have been used to create a picture of life at Kylemore Abbey over the past century.
The book is illustrated throughout with images from the Kylemore Abbey Archives. Between the chapters there are thematically organised collections of photographs which were specially commissioned for this volume. For this, our sincere thanks go to Michelle Cooper-Galvin and Diarmuid Galvin. The themes are derived from the four Benedictine mottoes: Pax (peace), Ora (prayer), Labora (work) and Succisa Virescit, which suggests the regrowth and renewal at Kylemore about which Mother Abbess Máire Hickey writes in the Epilogue.
We greatly appreciated the warm Benedictine hospitality of Mother Máire Hickey and the community at Kylemore Abbey during the research. Our gratitude is extended to Dr Damien Duffy, Kylemore Abbey Archivist, and to Dr Catriona Delaney, ConventCollections Fellow, UCD. Permission to cite letters from the Presentation Sisters Congregational Archives,
