Going to the Church of Our Lady of Mount Carmel in Kinsale

I really appreciate how there are a lot of the heritage sites here in Kinsale. Kinsale was once a great maritime center and people from all over the region would be coming here to trade. Those days are long gone now but the structures which were built back then still remain. I was surprised to know that one of the oldest structures here is the church of Saint Multose which is a Church of Ireland. I was somehow expecting Kinsale to have a very old Catholic church like the rest of Ireland. The nearby Saint John the Baptist church is a Catholic church but it was built “only” in the 1800s, making it very modern as far as churches go.

As I was walking around the town center I saw a sign to an abbey. This turned out to be the Church of Our Lady of Mount Carmel. This one is indeed much older than the church I mentioned above, having been built in the 1300s. As the name implies, the church is associated with the Carmelites. The curious thing was the these Carmelite hermites were from Mount Carmel itself in the Holy Land and they were fleeing an invasion. There were given the Saint Mary’s Abbey along with some land here. I think they have a very good location here overlooking the rest of the town. The way to the church itself it lined with shady trees, making for a very good walk.

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