Searching for Westmeath’s lost monuments

Regan Kelly

“Your society needs help finding Westmeath’s lost monuments,” Said Caimin O’Brien of the Archaeological Survey of Ireland, during a lecture in the Greville Arms last Wednesday March 26.

The event was hosted by the Westmeath Archaeological and Historical Society (WAHS), and more than 50 people were in attendance to hear Caimin describe how they are looking for monuments that are known to have existed, but cannot now be reliably located.

Caimin has recently started to examine the lost monuments of a county, and he knows of 184 monuments in Westmeath that have no precise location.

He looked at five different case studies in the county, which have unique case registration numbers on the Archaeological Survey of Ireland.

Those monuments were recorded on Down Survey maps of the mid 17th century, but their precise location is no longer clear.

The first monument he showed was Moyvore Castle, near the border of County Longford. The second was an Early Christian Cross Slab found on Hare Island on Lough Ree in the 1800s. The third was Finea Castle, which may have been in the modern day village, but traces of it are scarce.

The fourth monument was Monaghanstown Mass Rock in Castletown Geoghegan, which folklore says was blown up by canon during the time of the Penal Laws.

The fifth monument Caimin looked at was the Clonmaskill Corn and Tuck Mill, which may have been in the modern day area.

Ruth Illingworth, historian and member of the WAHS, closed the lecture: “I know another case of a farmhouse where in the 18th century a stone with the name of the house sitting on it from 1750 was found, and it didn’t go very far – when the house was demolished, it ended up in the lady’s garden, so perhaps some of these monuments may turn up somewhere.”

“Thank you very much, Kevin, for a fascinating lecture, very informative and we all enjoyed it very much,” Ruth said.