Editing Celbridge (section)

===St Wolstan's===
[[St Wolstan's County Kildare|St Wolstan's]], near the site of the ancient Abbey of St Wolstan's described by [[Mervyn Archdall (Irish antiquary)|Mervyn Archdall]] in his "Monasticon Hibernicum" in 1786 was originally a monastery in the [[Order of St Victor]]. It was founded c1202 by one of [[Richard de Clare, 2nd Earl of Pembroke|Strongbow]]'s companions for [[Adam de Hereford]]. It was named for [[St Wolstan|St Wulfstan]], [[Bishop of Worcester]], then newly canonised by [[Pope Innocent III]]. Before the time of the [[Dissolution of the Monasteries]] it had extensive lands in Kildare and Dublin with buildings covering an estimated 20 acres.<ref>St Wolstans Priory Celbridge by R Cane Claude (Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland 1919) ASIN: B0018Z2YG4</ref> It was the first Irish Monastery to be [[Dissolution of the Monasteries|dissolved]] when Sir [[Gerald Aylmer, Irish Judge|Gerald Aylmer]] of nearby [[Lyons Hill|Lyons]] (died 1559) petitioned [[Henry VIII]]. It then became the home to the ill-fated Lord Chancellor and Archbishop of Dublin [[John Alen]] (1476–1534). St Wolstan's after the Archbishop's cousin, also John Alen, who was master of the rolls, travelled with Aylmer to England in 1536 to receive the bill for suppression of the Irish monasteries. The act of St Wolstan's, introduced in September 1536 as a special commission of dissolution, assured Aylmer and his fellow chief justice and brother-in-law Thomas Luttrell an annual rent of £4 during the life of Sir Richard Weston, the last prior, while Alen was granted the monastery estates. The house remained with the Alen family for two subsequent centuries. St Wolstan's was then home to later Bishops of [[Bishop of Clogher|Clogher]] ([[Robert Clayton (bishop)|Robert Clayton]]) and [[Bishop of Limerick (Church of Ireland)|Limerick]], a summer resident of the Viceroy in the 1770s, a boys' school (sold 1809), home to the Cane family for another century and eventually a girls' secondary school (1957–1999) run by the Holy Faith sisters. When a new school building was built on the Clane Road in 2001, opening on 8 October, the name ''St. Wolstan's'' was reused for this.