Saturday, September 11, 2010

Jerpoint Abbey

Photo from Herve's Gallery.
Yesterday I was in Waterford Institute of Technology (where I am an External Examiner), and loved the new road which is now motorway all the way from Dublin to Waterford. Congrats to the NRA on a job well done, and I hope that they can somehow get the money to complete the N11/M11 on which I travel most. As I was going to Co Wexford later I cut across country through Kilkenny and Carlow. I stopped at Jerpoint Abbey for a quick look as it is so long since I last stopped there that I hardly remember it. 

Photo from Wikipedia.
For €3 you can wander around the abbey which was founded by Cistercian monks and dates back to the 12th century. It's astonishing to me that many parts of this building are more than 800 years old - and still standing. There are many Norman carvings on the walls and you can't but be in awe of this construction built to the glory of God. Any Irish peasants looking at this in the 12th and later centuries would probably not have ever seen anything man-made as big as this, and would have accepted without question that God existed (see my previous post about the existence of God).

The OPW look after the abbey and are currently engaged in some restoration. I asked what they were doing and they are working on a meeting room to improve their lecture series to include presentation equipment and multi-media gear. What would the Cistercian monks think?

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