Lane to the Past

The sign for Whitefield Cemetery caught my eye as I passed it on my way to Kilavery.  I backed up and headed there not suspecting that the answers I was hoping for at Kilavery would be found in more dramatic form in Whitefield.

It is another of the ‘forgotten cemeteries’  of south Wicklow, whose importance has recently been recognised as historical landmarks that help us understand ourselves from our past.

Why did a thriving south Wicklow centre like Tinahely have no Catholic church within the town? Looking for the answer I had first gone to Kilcommon, a few miles outside the town where an early Celtic church had existed and served the locality until the Reformation. Now only a COI stood there in a seemingly ordinary graveyard.    

An information board there stated that a Catholic church had been built at Kilavery in 1843 , on the other side of the town, and I was on my way there when I saw the road sign.  

Whitefield, which today looks like an overgrown field, is known as a ‘Penal Church’ -- one that served the local community in semi-secret for many years and was burnt down in the Rebellion of 1798.

Across a sea of tall grass only the tops of tomb stones were visible. In one semi-cleared area was an altar with benches laid out in front in cruciform shape. Efforts had been made in 2009 to remove the overgrowth and restore some of the church’s original shape, the altar and benches were left to mark its outline.

The restoration efforts seemed to have little long-term effect and I had to beat my way through briars to get to the gate. Inside, the cemetery had almost returned to its ‘forgotten’ status.

However there was an informative notice board which recalled two local incidents of significance. One was the burning of the church in 1798 and the second was the Great Famine, many of whose victims are buried on the site.

In November 1850 the local parish priest, Fr Thomas Hore, spoke to a vast crowd there about his intention to bring a large Irish Catholic colony out to Arkansas in the American mid-west.  In total 1,200 people emigrated with Father Hore.

I also noted that after the church at Whitefield (a humble affair of mud walls and thatched roof) was burned down in 1798 its rebuilding was funded by Earl Fitzwilliam, the landlord.  He also provided the site and funding for its replacement at Kilavery.

Obviously the relationships between the peasants (the Irish Catholics), the Ascendency (the COI landlords) and the artisans  (evangelical Protestant settlers) ) were more entangled than I had thought  The third  group, the ‘in-betweeners’, felt hated by the Irish and looked down upon by the Ascendency. Many of them also felt a need to rebel or emigrate.

Signposts to ‘forgotten graveyards’ should not be passed without thought. I am finding that their stories can paint a broader, and therefore a truer, picture of who we are.