Category: Cemeteries/graveyards

• Seir Kieran- Part 1. By John Dolan. Blog No 182, 25th March 2020

  We welcome a new contributor this week to our series of articles on the history of County Offaly. John Dolan writes about Seir Kieran in this fine piece. John was born in Tullamore, now retired, and has a degree Archaeology and Celtic Civilisation. He speaks regularly to historical societies in Dublin. Part 2 will be published next Wednesday. Seir Kieran is the ‘island parish’ in Offaly belonging to the diocese of Ossory. Our blog articles are brought to you twice weekly during these weeks  of the plague to hopefully provide some inner peace through historical inquiry. You now have 182 to chose  from and can join the 150,000 views since 2016.

  

  The parish of Seir Kieran is one of the many early Christian sites that remain under reported and hidden in today’s world. Since its destruction by ‘the O’Carrol and the English’ in 1548 and similar to many other Offaly early churches, it has dropped into insignificance.
  Seir Kieran is now mainly known for the history of its GAA club rather than its claim to be a Christian site before the arrival of St. Patrick.

  (more…)

  March 25, 2020

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• Stories and traditions from the historic ruins in Ballinagar. Specially Contributed by John Malone, Blog No 159, 2nd Nov 2019

  

  ‘At Ballinagar a large and handsome R.C. chapel was in the course of erection in the ancient English style of architecture’.

  Samuel Lewis in 1837 remarks that ‘at Ballinagar a large and handsome R.C. chapel was in the course of erection in the ancient English style of architecture’. This church replaced an earlier thatched building on the same site which probably dated back to the latter half of the 18th century on the relaxing of penal laws. When the present day church was reopened after being burnt in 2004, the wooden tabernacle of the original church was gifted by the Hackett family to the church and is now kept in the sacristy.
  Lewis also remarks that near Ballinagar are the ruins of a church. There is local tradition that there was a church on Hackett’s lane on the Geashill road in Ballyduff south. There was a church in Clonmore called Balleen Lawn church and there also was a reference by Dr Comerford in his history of Kildare and Leighlin to a church graveyard in Clonadd which is between Ballinagar and Daingean.

  (more…)

  November 2, 2019

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• An Encounter with Banagher’s Faithful Departed by James Scully. Blog No 152, 14th Sept 2019

  

  The fifth That Beats Banagher Festival held this summer was a great success. As in previous years the festival included an imaginative heritage event. This year participants were brought on a walkabout in the old graveyard on the ancient monastic site of Saint Rynagh. The event was entitled An Encounter with Banagher’s Faithful Departed which hinted at the scenes which were to unfold.

  (more…)

  September 14, 2019

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• Jane Molony, the hot lover from Clonony Castle near Ferbane by Cosney Molloy. Blog No 121, 16th Feb 2019

  Spring is in the air and I decided to tip down to Offaly during the week of St Valentine’s and see my old friends in Killoughy and Banagher. There are a still a fair number of Molloys in that part of the world. Everywhere I go now I hear about Tullamore because of the new distillery and I think back to the time when some of my ancestors had distilleries in Tullamore, Kilcormac and Banagher. As to Molonys I was told once by a Tipperary man that there are at least 22 variants of the name so good luck with the searching for this family.

  

  Clonony Castle
  I was down before Christmas and got to visit Clonony Castle where the charming woman Rebecca Armstrong resides and is the hostess for seasonal and summer events there and has the old castle open to the public. I believe she restored it herself and is there about sixteen or seventeen years. She has done a great public service and I suppose got no grants of any kind. Had the OPW done the job you can be sure it would have cost millions and be closed half of the year.
  De Renzi and Clonony
  Anyway enough grousing. We Molloys are nothing if not resilient. I asked some of the big wigs in the Offaly Historical Society to find out more about a barrister by the name of Edmund Molony because I came across an inscription that he put up for his wife in a London church which seems to have been as ample as was her love for the same Edmund. It struck a chord because of my pre-Christmas visit to that lovely old castle which is near the Grand Canal and the town of Ferbane.

  (more…)

  February 16, 2019

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• Pilgrims to Santiago de Compostela from the Irish midlands in the fifteenth century by Bernadette Cunningham. Blogs No 111, 08 Dec 2018

   

  Santiago de Compostela became an international pilgrimage destination in the twelfth century, at a time when the doctrine of purgatory was widely promulgated and the idea of indulgences was gaining popularity. The local archbishop, Diego Gelmírez (d.1140), promoted the cult of St James and the shrine in the Cathedral of Santiago became one of the three major pilgrimage destinations of the Christian world. This offered those living on the Atlantic edge of Europe an accessible alternative to Rome and Jerusalem.
  There were two separate phases of the Santiago pilgrimage from medieval Ireland. The earlier phase, beginning in the thirteenth century, was a distinctly Anglo-Norman one, with pilgrims drawn from towns on the east and south coast. During the second phase – in the fifteenth century – Gaelic pilgrims from throughout Ireland, including the midlands, displayed a strong interest in going to Santiago. They almost invariably made the pilgrimage in jubilee years, when the feast of St James (25 July) fell on a Sunday and special indulgences could be earned.

  (more…)

  December 8, 2018

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• KILBEGGAN AND WORLD WAR 1. Stan McCormack. Blogs No 110, 01 Dec 2018

  

  The conversation about the 100th anniversary of World War 1 this last month is on-going, with reference to poppys and Easter lilies, as part of the story. It should be a lot simpler as it has always been about remembering the people who died or who were injured in World War 1 and during the 1916-21 period in Irish history, without exclusion. In Kilbeggan we have two small memorials on the Green remembering World War 1 and Ireland between 1916-21, almost beside each other, as it’s the same history, the same nation, and in many ways the same ideals.

  (more…)

  December 1, 2018

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• ‘The dead open the eyes of the living’: St Joseph’s Cemetery, Tullamore by Girvan McKay, Clonminch. Blogs No 109, 24 Nov 2018

  

  Living just beside the cemetery, we often walk there and I have been struck by the informative and often moving inscriptions on the
  tombstones of the graves there. It struck me that these throw a
  valuable sidelight into the pattern of life and death in Tullamore.
  Some are very sad, especially those on the graves of infants and the
  very young. There are others that make you reflect on how strange
  attitudes are. For example, when we came to live here in the summer
  of 1983, you never saw tombstones commemorating any of the thousands
  of Irish volunteers who fell in the two World Wars. We know that
  until very recently it wasn’t politic (except in the North) to admit
  that any member of an Irish family had served in what was regarded as
  British regiment. But one day, not so long ago, I noticed that a
  number of War Grave Commission tombstones had suddenly appeared like
  mushrooms in St Joseph’s Cemetery. I list them below:
  War Graves in St. Joseph’s Cemetery, Tullamore (more…)

  November 24, 2018

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• Durrow Abbey House, Tullamore A better future on the horizon for the monastic site, house and lands?Blog No 63, 06 Jan 2018

  It would be nice to write that Durrow Abbey house, Tullamore is in course of restoration and that it, the High Cross and Church and the parklands adjoining will soon be properly open to the public. It’s possible but getting more difficult as the house continues to deteriorate. It has been vacant for a considerable time. Councillor Tommy McKeigue drew attention to it recently at Offaly County Council and Paul Moore has reminded us of it in his photographs that are too kind to its present sad condition. But there are hopeful signs. The footpath from Durrow Woods should be completed this year and will allow walkers to come close to the house and the old church at Durrow and High Cross. At least more people will see it and become aware of its potential to midlands/ Ireland East, or is it Lakelands Tourism.

  (more…)

  January 6, 2018

  Durrow Abbey House, Durrow High Cross, Lord Norbury, OPW, tourism

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• Captain Studholme of Ballyegan, by Stephen Callaghan.Blog No 46, 09 Sept 2017

  Captain Lancelot Joseph Moore Studholme (1884-1916)

  Behind Ballyegan House, on the side of a windswept hill stands an old oak cross. The tarnished bronze plaque commemorates the name of a brave Birr born Officer, Captain Lancelot Joseph Moore Studholme of the 7^th Battalion, Leinster Regiment who was killed in action on 9 September 1916, 101 years ago. This is his story. (more…)

  September 9, 2017

  7th Battalion Leinster Regiment, Ballyegan, Ballyegan House, Captain Studholme, Guillemont

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• Kilcruttin Cemetery, Tullamore, no 1 in a cemetery series Michael Byrne. Blog No 43, 19 August 2017.

   Kilcruttin cemetery is located off Cormac Street and close to the boundaries of what is now Scoil Mhuire. Indeed, the original access lane and entrance to this cemetery is still to be seen. It’s the oldest cemetery in Tullamore town and dates back to the 1700s. At one time it was on the outskirts of the town and in soft poor ground close to the Tullamore river. It was not the cemetery of choice for the upper ten in Tullamore, but nonetheless has some very good monuments including that to the Methodist merchant Burgess and the German baron Oldershausen of the King’s German Legion, the heroes of Waterloo.

  (more…)

  August 19, 2017

  Death, disease, Graveyards

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