Cloister
This small cloister was used as a recreation ground for the Magdalene Women. It was separated from the outside world by tall walls on three sides and the Ironing Room on its fourth.
[To view reconstruction sources, click here]
“There was bars on the windows and over the walls there was barbed wire and it was kind of like…there was kind of bar…steel bars and in between all them steel bars there was barbed wire……so there was no way that you could actually climb up over the wall. The walls were too high anyway.”
O’Donnell, K., S. Pembroke and C. McGettrick. (2013) “Oral History of Lucy”. Magdalene Institutions: Recording an Oral and Archival History.
Government of Ireland Collaborative Research Project, Irish Research Council, p. 26.




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Source: Shaffrey Associates Architects, Conservation Report: Covent [sic] Lands: Sean MacDermott Street Lower, Dublin, 2007. p.18.
It would certainly have been incredibly difficult to stage an escape from this area. In addition to the tall walls (over 4m) reportedly capped with broken glass and/or barbed wire, the cloister’s ‘Covered Way’ noted on the 1954 survey by W.H. Byrne and Son Architects would have made an extremely effective impediment to climbing the walls.
The Cloister was paved over following the 2006 fire, although the perimeter walls still stands mostly intact.
