Duleek is a village in County Meath, Ireland. Duleek takes its name from the Irish word daimh liag, meaning house of stones and referring to an early stone-built church, St Cianán’s Church, the ruins of which are still visible in Duleek today.
History
Duleek began as an early Christianmonastic settlement. St Patrick established a bishopric here about 450 AD, which he placed in the care of St Cianán on 24 November 489. The place was sacked several times by the Norsemen between 830 and 1149 and was also pillaged by the Normans in 1171. In April 1014 the bodies of Brian Ború and his son lay in state in Duleek on their way to Armagh. The original monastery settlement is reputed to be the place where St. Patrick and several contemporaries spent the winter period while compiling the Seanchas Mór - the first written compiled form of the ancient Brehon Laws of Ireland in the fifth century. The 12th century saw the reconstitution of the original monastery as St Mary's Abbey and the subsumption of the Diocese of Duleek by the Diocese of Meath. The first Anglo-NormanLord of Meath, Hugh de Lacy, established a manor and constructed a motte castle at Duleek. About 1180 he granted St Cianán's Church, together with certain lands, to the Augustinians. The churchyard of the now disused Church of Ireland church occupies part of the site of the early monastery. On the opposite side of the village in the town land of Abbeyland close to the river Nanny and Duleek house there are ruins of the Grange of St.Michael. This grange was established in about 1172 by Augustinian monks from Llanthony in Monmouthshire; the lands were granted to them by the De Lacy family. The village’s four crosses and the lime tree on the village green are reminders of Duleek’s links to the struggle between William and James and to wider European unrest at the time of Louis XIV of France. One of the crosses, the Wayward Cross, was however erected in 1601 by Janet Dowdall in memory of her husband, Sir William Bathe of Athcarne Castle outside the village. During World War II, or The Emergency, German bombers accidentally struck the village on 1 January 1941; minor damage was caused and there were no casualties. A heritage trail, the Duleek Heritage Trail, covers a number of sites in the village centre and was "conceived as a series of stepping stones through the village" and its history.
