Tracing the Past

I finally arrived at Kilaveney, wondering if was worth the trouble.  It is a comfortable Catholic church on a hill, alone in the countryside and with no history before 1843.

A plaque inside tells its story. It was built to replace the ‘Penal Church’ at Whitefield, burnt down in the 1798 Rebellion, and the monastic church at Killcommon which had served the area prior to that. It is also the parish church for Tinahely though it did not explain why the church was there and not in Tinahely itself, several miles away.  I had already guessed the reason.

Nor did it explain why the church was dedicated to St Kevin (whose Glendalough is not far) though its name ‘Kil-aveney’ would suggest it had been the ‘Cell/church (Kil-) of Aveney’. Who was Aveney? 

Looking for an answer led me to an article in a journal from 1921. It proposed that Kilaveney was in fact Cill-fine, the ‘Church of the Tribes’, founded by Palladius the first missionary to Ireland (ie before Patrick).

Previously I had searched for the three churches known to be founded by Palladius in the Wicklow area: Teach-na-Roman (House of the Romans) now Tigroney, the Domnacha Ard (Church on the Heights) now known as Donard, and finally Cill-fine (with accent on final ‘e‘ and meaning ‘Church of the Tribes’). At that time I was told that Cill-fine was at Killeen Cormac (‘Cell Fine Chormaic’) an ancient mound in Kildare where King Cormac of Munster was buried after a battle in 908.

However most scholars now don’t accept that Killeen Cormac was Palladius’ Cill-fine so there is room for Kilaveney.

When Palladius arrived in Wicklow in 432 Nathi, king of north Wicklow, did not welcome him so he moved inland. (The same Nathi would not let Patrick even land when he arrived there some years later.)

Having gone to hilly Tigroney and Donard, and stopped by high mountains, the only road forward for Palladius was south, towards Kilaveney. How explain the name? It seems that, allowing for changes in F and V spellings in Irish,  Kill- Fine became Kil-vineny and Kil-aveney.

Tracing this possibility expanded my feeling for the area. In Palladius’ time it was known as ‘The Cosha’, (‘The Hallow’), a quiet spot among the Wicklow foothills. Three hundred years later a holy man named Comain came from Dal nAraidh in the north and established a monastic community at what is now called Kilcommon, Comain’s Church.   Little more is known of him except that he died in 747.  

For the next one thousand years the people of the Hallow lived undisturbed except for occasional clashes in the area between the encroaching Normans and the local O’Toole/O’Byrnes.   

Centuries-old beliefs and practices were disturbed only when Wicklow became the ‘new frontier’ in 1630 with English adventurers buying up huge estates in its forests and hills.

What happened next may be what is buried in the ‘forgotten graveyards‘ of south Wicklow.