Kerlogue Altar Stone

At Kerlogue, a short distance outside Wexford, was a foundation of the Military Order of the Knights Templars. It was abandoned long before the so-called Reformation. Unnoticed and hidden, the Altar Stone of the ancient Church of St. James remained within the ruined walls. Then in Penal times when Mass had to be celebrated in secret it was to the hidden ruin of Kerlogue Monastery that Priest and people crept, in the grey dawn of a Sunday morning, and the Altar Stone was used once more.

On the return of better times the Altar at Kerlogue was again abandoned almost forgotten, until in 1887 Father Luke Doyle, Adm., of Bride Street had the Altar taken down and re-erected in the grounds of the Church of the Assumption.

In 1956 Rev. Michael O’Neill, Adm., had the Altar moved to its present resting place in front of the Mission Cross, where it was in years past, used as the Altar of Repose from which Benediction was given during the annual procession of the Blessed Sacrament.

At each transfer of the Altar the stones composing the base were carefully numbered, and it stands today exactly as it stood in the old Monastery of Kerlogue.

The Cross at the back of the Altar is the Mission Cross which was erected to commemorate the first great Parish Mission given by the Redemptorist Fathers in 1858.