Saint Nicholas Collegiate Church of Ireland

Galway City

20 November 2009

Collegiate Church of St. Nicholas. Galway was one of the most important Atlantic ports of north-western Europe during the Middle Ages, and it was natural that its main church should be dedicated to St. Nicholas of Myra who, although better known to us today as Santa Claus, was also the patron saint of mariners. The church was founded in 1320, and remains one of the best-preserved and best-kept of Ireland’s medieval town churches, but it is unique among them in having a triple nave. The carvings on the exterior windows are worthy of inspection, showing foliage, a dragon and even a mermaid, an appropriate maritime theme. Equally engaging are the gargoyles of the tower which has a carillon of bells ranging in date from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century. Any medieval church furnishings of value were misappropriated by the English king’s Lord Deputy Leonard when he came to Galway in 1537 to ensure that the loyal inhabitants of the town turned their religious allegiance from the Pope to king Henry VIII. Cromwellian troops cleared out anything that may have been left, though fragments of two wooden mitres and a crown managed to survive. Interior medieval highlights are of necessity, therefore, of stone, notably the carvings of the arches leading from the outer naves to the transepts, where angels, foliage and heraldic merchants’ marks may be found. Further fine stonework of fifteenth / sixteenth-century date is found in the south transept. The first item of interest there is the tombniche with a flamboyant canopy above seven empty pointed niches, and with a figure of Christ displaying his wounds. Nearby is a window with well-carved angels, each with a foliate emblem above and, finally, in the south-east corner, now surmounted by three wooden crosses, there is a flat tomb with side niches which is traditionally associated with the famous mayor James Lynch, whose unfortunate fate it was, as administrator of the city’s justice, to hang his own son in 1493, a sad event commemorated on a wall in the street outside the church. Probably the oldest of the many tombstones in the church is a thirteenth / fourteenth century tapering slab now in the Chapel of Peace in the north transept. A number of more recent memorials recall members of the Connaught Rangers, the famous local regiment, two of whose sadly tattered flags hang in the north aisle. Between them is the entrance to the Blessed Sacrament Chapel, which is framed by what is a partially surviving medieval reading desk. The two five-light stained-glass windows in the east and west walls are dedicated to nineteenth-century members of the Persse family (to which the great Lady Gregory belonged), while two of those in the north wall of the chancel were erected in memory of James Fleetwood Berry, rector and historian of the church, who died in 1925.

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