Kilraghtis Graveyard, Barefield, Ennis
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2013 KILRAGHTIS Transcriptions of the burials GRAVEYARD BAREFIELD, ENNIS, CO. CLARE €3 Acknowledgements Introduction The timing of this Sincere thanks are project, recording the offered to: grave inscriptions in Kilraghtis Graveyard, Peter Beirne and Brian was very opportune Doyle, Clare Local as a number of Studies for their help. burials in the interior Margaret McNamara, of the church go back for the historical to the 18th century information on Kilraghtis and are now Parish. becoming very difficult to read. We transcribed and recorded all the burials and noted the location of unmarked stones of an indeterminate Transcriptions age. Graveyards often contain unmarked memorials that Edel Greene indicate the location of burials by those who could not afford Mary Kearns the costs of an inscribed memorial and should not be removed from the surface of the graveyard. We came across an interesting collection of tombs and headstones dedicated to a Graveyard Map wide range of people including clergy and representing family names still numerous in the parish today. Alan Sexton Jimmy Kearns To add flesh to the bones of the Layout inscriptions, we Fiona Kearns have provided some background information on Sponsors the big houses and reports and obituaries from journals of the period associated with some of the families buried in Kilraghtis. We hope that our recordings will be interest and assistance to the local The Clare Archaeological community and to genealogists. We have endeavoured to be as & Historical Society accurate as possible and it should be noted that we did not make assumptions when transcribing incomplete or much worn inscriptions and noted only what was readable; in some instances we came across fragments of the inscription e.g. Rou, Ro, etc. 1 | Page The Parish of Kilraghtis O’Donovan & Curry’s Ordnance Survey recorded in the transcriptions and letters (1839) state that Kilraghtis or members of this family continue to live in Kilraughtish parish is located in the north the parish today. east portion of the County of Clare, in the The focus of the old parish centred on the Barony of Bunratty Upper, bounded on now defunct and roofless, but relatively the north by the Parish of Inchicronan, well preserved, Kilraghtis church. south by the Parish of Doora, east by O’Donovan and Curry note in 1839 that the Inchicronan and Doora, east by walls of the church ‘remain perfect’. “It Inchicronan and Clooney and west by measures sixty three feet four inches in Templemaley. The parish name translates length and seventeen feet nine inches in as Cill Reachtais, the Church of Reachtas. A breath. There is a semicircular doorway in more recent translation of the name the south side and a semicircular window Kilraghtis provides the interesting with the little arch rudely scooped out of a interpretation ‘Church of the legislation’ rough flag stone, the whole built up of (Flanagan 1994). O’Donovan and Curry common field stone. The east window is deliberate whether Reachtas is the name circular at top divided into two arrow-head of a saint or the place. The Letters say that divisions in front by a mullion”. St. Finghein of Quin was worshipped in Kilraghtis but all memory of the Patron In ‘The History and Topography of Day is lost, that is if there was one to begin County Clare’ (1893), Frost refers the with. A 1601 reference to the place in the ‘raths and forts of the parish are Annals of the Four Masters is also noted in unworthy of description’. Frost also the Letters. mentions Maoilin Mac Brody, who he says resided in Ballyogan and makes The sons of John Bourke and Teige reference to Donogh Neylon, who was O’Brien…sent forth marauding parties on ‘parish priest of Kilraghtis for many both parts of the River Fergus into the years’ in the post medieval period. Frost lower part of the Territory of O’Fearmaic (1906) translates Ballymaconna as Baile and the upper part of Clann Cuilein. Some Mac Conad, ‘O’Conna’s Home’. of these advanced to Baile-Ui-Aille and to Clonroade and they returned that night Westropp dates Kilraghtis church to the with spoils to Cill Reachtais… later 15th century. He refers to its well built and perfect state, noting in particular O’Donovan and Curry also note that the double-lighted trefoil-headed east Kilraghtis was the birth place of Teige and window and slightly pointed south door. In Maoilin Mac Brody. The name Brody and a paper, dating to 1902, Westropp refers the alternative spelling Brodie are 2 | Page to the Kilraghtis area as ‘diversified and The families associated with the house are interesting, formed by a group of low listed as Kirwin, Curtin, Gregg and Hickey. rounded hills with a curious fortress-like Richard Gregg lived at Cappa (sic) in 1814. outcrop of stratified rock at Dromgloon.’ By 1855 John Curtin was in possession of He mentions that the church was called this house and its one hundred and thirty Kilrathusa in the Papal taxation of 1302. five acre estate, according to Griffith's Westropp provides a detailed description Valuation, but the Greggs are recorded as of the possible wedge tomb in having been of “Cappagh” in the Ballymaconna and notes that the ‘Dermot nineteenth century, and as having and Grania’s Bed’ designation had no intermarried with the Vesey Fitzgeralds of resonance locally, the monument being Ashgrove and other leading families (Weir, referred to simply as the ‘Lobba’. Mention 1999). Thomas Cullinan, Esq., resided at is also made of Maoilin MacBrody, who Cappa House in the 1870s; he is dwelled in Ballyogan between 1640 and acknowledged in the Clare Journal (1871) 1668, father to the ‘well known monastic with a list of donors who contributed £1 historian, Anthony Bruodinus’. In a later towards the building of the new Catholic paper, dating to 1917, Westropp again Church in Barefield. (Kearns, 2009) refers to the church and the wedge tombs in Ballymaconna and Ballyogan and The Gregg Family (Ref. Richard Gregg Esq remarks that the ‘…forts are featureless & Barbara Fitzgerald) and of little interest’. Richard Gregg resided at Cappa in the Houses associated with the burials in Kilraghtis 1700s and was married to Elizabeth Robinett, they had four children. Their son CAPPAGH HOUSE Richard born 1747 married Barbara Fitzgerald born about 1760, daughter of Weir (1999) states that Cappagh House William Vesey Fitzgerald Esq of Ashgrove house was a plain, gable-ended two story House in 1780. They had ten children the Georgian structure facing south, with a most famous being Bishop John Gregg yard and utility buildings to the rear. The (1798–1878). There were two John one-storey, three bay, brick-built gate Gregg’s, one having died shortly before lodge was erected across the road from Bishop John Gregg was born (1790–1798). the gates, which had tall cut stone gate While he died at Cappa there is no mention piers incorporating scrolls. The house is of his burial in Kilraghtis. Richard Gregg now demolished. died the 24th February 1808 in Dublin and his burial place is not given. A notice in the History Ennis Chronicle of Feb 27 1808 reads as 3 | Page follows: Death, Richard Gregg of Cappa a – 1959. In St. Coloumba's Church of Ireland serious misfortune to the indigent of his one of the stained glass windows is neighbourhood, who daily participated in dedicated to John Gregg D.D., Bishop of his bounty. His wife Barbara died 1 Cork and this was presented by his son September 1836 and is buried in Kilraghtis Robert S. Gregg, Archbishop of Armagh. graveyard. The gravestone has no dates and includes her two sons Richard and ASHGROVE HOUSE William Gregg. Richard (1781–1842) married Margaret Cusack in Cappa, Ennis, 1820, she died 12 September 1877 in Adelaide, South Australia and is buried in West Terrace Cemetery, Adelaide. William Gregg (1785–1860) married Eleanor Blood. One other member of this family is recorded as being buried in Kilraghtis, Frances Gregg born Cappa Ennis 1796, died 27th Mar 1816 Ennis, Clare. (No record of this burial in Kilraghtis). Ashgrove House (courtesy of the Marlborough family) “From the Memorials of the life of Bishop Ashgrove House in the townland of John Gregg, D.D” (Gregg, 2008) we get Ballyogan was associated with the information on the Gregg family at Cappa. Fitzgerald, Comyn and McMahon families It was a small property and when Richard and in 1855 Ashgrove and its sixty-nine Gregg died of fever in Dublin in 1808 acre farm were in the hands of Francis without making a will the family property Marlborough. The Marlborough family then passed to the eldest son, Richard in continue this association today (Weir, whose hands it did not prosper. It appears 1999). that Richard Gregg had not intended that (Barbara Fitzgerald who married Richard the property descend to Richard Jnr. as the Gregg aforementioned was born here). mode of living was displeasing to him. John Gregg (who later became bishop), Features continued to live with his mother, to whom The house is an eighteenth-century, one- he was deeply attached. He attended the story, seven bay house (originally one-and- private school in Ennis kept by a Mr. a-half storeys) facing east over a garden O'Halloran and later attended Trinity towards a small lake. A long avenue College. Barbara Gregg was at this time a approaches from the south. The original member of the Roman Catholic Church, yard buildings to the north east are now although before her death the life and completely modernised. A cairn stands to teaching of her son led her to “embrace a the south of the property (Weir, 1999).