Christchurch Cathedral Dublin is of Hiberno-Norse origin (like many of the other coastal cathedrals in Ireland).
VIKING CHRISTCHURCH
Founded by King Sitric Silkenbeard of Dublin sometime after 1028, the cathedral was initially a wooden building.
CHRISTCHURCH according to Samuel Lewis (1837)
"The records of Christ-Church inform us that it owes its foundation to Sitric, the son of Aulaffe, king of Dublin, who, about the year 1038, gave to Donat, bishop of that see, a place where arches or vaults were built, on which to erect a church to the honour of the Blessed Trinity, to whom the building was accordingly dedicated.
It was originally the conventual church of a monastery of secular canons unattached to any of the cenobitical orders, who were changed by Laurence O'Toole, in 1163, to canons regular of the order of Arras, a branch of the Augustinians.
Sitric originally endowed this establishment with some small tracts on the sea coast of the present county of Dublin, and these possessions were greatly extended after the arrival of the English when the successive augmentations of its revenue raised it to the rank of one of the most important priories in the island.
Its privileges were confirmed by Henry II and his successors; its priors were spiritual peers of parliament. This convent had anciently an endowed cell in the diocese of Armagh."
MEDIEVAL CHRISTCHURCH
In the 1180s, Christchurch aka the Holy Trinity was rebuilt in stone following the arrival of the Anglo-Normans to Ireland, led by Richard de Clare, 2nd Earl of Pembroke.
CHRISTCHURCH TODAY
The Christchurch Cathedral building that we know and love today was built on this site in the 1870s.
