Images of Christ Church and St Patrick's Cathedrals

Illustrations of Dublin’s two medieval cathedrals, Christ Church and St Patrick’s, with a short history of each and links to fuller accounts on the site.

Dublin is unusual in having two medieval cathedrals within a short walk of each other, both now belonging to the Church of Ireland. The images below show Christ Church Cathedral first and St Patrick’s Cathedral second.

Christ Church Cathedral

Christ Church, formally the Cathedral of the Holy Trinity, was founded around 1030 by the Norse king Sitric Silkenbeard and Dúnán, the first bishop of Dublin. It stands on high ground at the heart of the old walled city. It was rebuilt in stone in the decades after the Anglo-Norman arrival, and a tomb effigy traditionally known as Strongbow’s lies in the nave. The building was heavily restored between 1871 and 1878 by the architect George Edmund Street, at the expense of the distiller Henry Roe, who also paid for the adjoining Synod Hall.

St Patrick’s Cathedral

St Patrick’s was founded in 1191 by Archbishop John Comyn as a collegiate church just outside the city walls, beside a well associated by tradition with St Patrick, and was later raised to the status of a cathedral. Much of the present building dates from the thirteenth century. Jonathan Swift was its dean from 1713 to 1745 and is buried there. In the 1860s it was extensively restored at the expense of Sir Benjamin Lee Guinness. It is now the National Cathedral of the Church of Ireland.

For more detail, see D. A. Chart on Christ Church and St Patrick’s Cathedral, the short history of St Patrick’s cathedral, the 1908 account of the cathedrals and churches of Dublin, and Harris on cathedrals and parish churches.