Oldest headstone at St Owen’s dates from 1613

National Heritage Week

The treasurers of St Owen’s church and graveyard, as uncovered in recent years by local enthusiasts, were revealed to a large gathering that met there last Saturday week for a Heritage Week tour, given by Seamus McDermott, who has been to the forefront in preserving St Owen’s and its antiquities.

Seamus recounted the history of the present church, built in 1827, the third church built on this site, the first dating from the late 1100s. He displayed stones from that first church and pointed out the carving of a human face on the side of one of them.

The church closed in 1959 and three of the stained glass windows, which were donated by the Malone family, were moved to All Saints Church in Mullingar, and the bell went to St Dorothy’s in Belfast. Other items went to Almorita, near Rathconrath.

In recent years, the local restoration group has received grant aid to rebuilt the church tower which was about to fall. Next year, they hope to tackle the gable end wall which is also in danger of collapsing.

Seamus remarked that there are 220 gravestones in St Owen’s. In 2018, when work began, it was totally overgrown and almost inaccessible. The local group set about cleaning it up and cataloguing the gravestones. On the side of each headstone is a number encased in glass, thanks to the talent of local glass making artist Mary Connaughton. A full inventory of the gravestones is posted at the entrance to the graveyard.

Seamus gave a brief history of the many families buried in St Owen’s, traversing the parish as he did so. The oldest headstone is that of the Wise family, which dates to 1613 and features a carving of a hatchet or adze, and an auger, which Seamus explained probably indicated that the deceased was a carpenter.

The second oldest dates back to 1692 and belongs to the Dalton family, who ruled from Rathconrath to the Bridge of Cresh – the Dillons ruled from there to Athlone.

The headstone of Edmund Dillon of “Mount Dillon, near Moyvore” is a bit of an enigma as it is not know where Mount Dillon was. Also buried there was “Mary Dillon, otherwise Ward”.

Next on the tour was the day chapel or chapel of rest of the Magan family of Umma, Moyvoughley, who once owned 25,000 acres of land in Westmeath, Seamus stated. The building features a niche which would have held the family coat of arms, and the doorway and window were from an older fortified house, he pointed out.

One of the most striking monuments in the graveyard is that of James Hill Shaw of Umma. It features clenched fists facing upwards at the four corners and Seamus joked that, contrary to what local children surmised, the deceased was not a boxer, but a Free Mason.

One of the saddest is the grave of the Rev Cooper for it contains his three children, who died at the start of the 1900s, aged 4 years, 9 years and 2 years, and his wife who died in 1934, aged 64 years. Rev Cooper died in 1950, aged 95 years.

Seamus and his brother-in-law Peter Cunningham from Drumraney, both told stories of people from abroad who had come in search of family roots and had found the cataloguing of these graves helpful.

Bridget Geoghegan, a native of Moyvoughley, now living at Lilliput, on behalf of all present, thanked Seamus for his informative talk and for the work he and others have put into restoring the church and graveyard.

As the group proceeded to the fort, the site of the 1691 Siege of Ballymore, Seamus pointed out an area just outside the church grounds where unBaptised children, those who had committed suicide and knights of the road, were buried in unmarked graves.

At the site of the fort, Seamus gave a stark account of the Siege of Ballymore when some 800 Jacobites withstood the might of the 11,000 strong, heavily armed Williamites for days, before surrendering. He outlined the horrors of the siege and the aftermath when starving women and children are reported to have crawled into the bellies of dead horses to eat their flesh. Many were shipped to Lambay Island, given a day’s provisions, and left to starve. The officers were imprisoned and probably transported, Seamus explained, adding that there is no record of what happened to them.

One member of the group produced a cannonball believed to date to the 1691 siege.