The Five Trendsetters of Killiney

Killiney is noted for its millionaire residents with their front-seat view over Ireland’s ‘Bay of Naples’. However long before U2’s Bono, The Edge, Enya and Van Morrison bought homes there it was known as Cill Inion Leinin, the monastic ‘Cell of the Daughters of Leinin’.

There were seven of them: Aiglenn, Macha, Luiden, Druiden, Luicill, Bimtach and Briga. Their father was a local chieftain and on becoming Christians his daughters formed a ‘Desert Fathers and Mothers’ community to further their search.  They lived in beehive-shaped cells on a gorse and boulders covered Killiney Hill, coming together for a meal, study and reciting the Psalms. Gradually others joined them in their spiritual journey but you can see from the site today that the community was never large.   

George Petrie, the famous antiquarian of early Victorian Ireland, called what remained on the site in his time ‘a ruin in perfection’ and expressed a wish to be buried there.  Since he was familiar with more Irish ruins than most this was quite a compliment. (However he was buried in Mount Jerome cemetery in 1866.)

In Petrie’s time the prospering classes in Dublin were discovering the fresh sea and mountain air of nearby Killiney and began building ‘handsome and commodious villa residences’ on the hillside. Their genteel lifestyle barely disturbed the peace once enjoyed by Leinin’s daughters.  

Today a warren of semi-private laneways lead to gated driveways and I had to work my way through them to find where the sisters had lived. Like the grand houses around them their ‘residence’ is now securely guarded by locked gates. I could see well-tended graves inside and the ruins of a 12^th century church on which preservation work had recently been completed.  

On the barred gate was an invitation to an ecumenical memorial service the following day (a Sunday). There would be a blessing of the graves, a talk on the ‘Historical Perspective’, music with ‘The Cill Inion Leinin Singers’ and Refreshments. 

It seemed right that the daughters of the local chieftain would invite neighbours for an annual cup of tea. 

I went on to the nearby parish church, a few minutes away, to see the stained glass window in which two of the sisters, Macha and Luiden, are represented. The intention was good but their appearance and clothes are obviously from a much later era. (The church was built in the 1850s and the stained glass came from France.)

Its a reminder of how little we know of how the Irish of the 6th or 7^th centuries looked or dressed. However now more information is available on the Christianity that attracted the Irish of that time and how it developed a distinctly Celtic (or Gaelic) shape.  The seven ladies on Killiney Hill probably never thought of themselves as trendsetters.