Tintern Abbey at Bannow Bay in Wexford is today a place of beauty and tranquillity, secured if not fully restored by the OPW: a lasting monument to the earliest days of the Norman invasion from which its foundation sprung, as John Mulcahy reports
Tintern in the south-west of County Wexford was founded by William Marshal, one of the most distinguished knights in the service of Henry II and subsequently of his two sons Richard and John. Marshal was a nephew of Strongbow, the Earl of Pembroke, whose daughter (by Aoife Mac Murrough Kavanagh), Isabel, he married and thus inherited vast estates in Leinster. The legend has it that William Marshal was sailing to Waterford in the autumn of 1200 when his vessel was struck by a violent storm. The good knight beseeched the Virgin Mary to deliver him safely to shore and pledged to establish a monastery where he landed if his life was spared. (This dramatic scene is re-created in one of the very beautiful series of fifteen Ros Tapestries created by Ann Bernstorff.
David Davidson pays tribute to Bill Doyle, Dublin-born master photographer, who in these fond studies has left an indelible record of his country