All Lewis entries for Kilmacduagh

CONNELLS

CONNELLS, a village, in the parish of KILMACDUAGH, barony of KILTARTAN, county of GALWAY, and province of CONNAUGHT, 3 miles (W.) from Gort, on the road to Ennis ; containing 12 houses and 87 inhabitants.

GORT

GORT, a market and post-town, partly in the parishes of KILTARTAN and BEAGH, but chiefly in that of KILMACDUAGH, barony of KILTARTAN, county of GALWAY, and province of CONNAUGHT, 17 miles (S. S. E.) from Galway, and 98- (W. by S.) from Dublin, on the road from Galway to Ennis ; containing 3627 inhabitants. This town Consists of 563 houses, most of which are neat stone buildings, three or four stories high, held under perpetual leases from Viscount Gort. It is built on an eminence on the main road from Connaught to Munster, with a large square in the centre, and is in a very healthy situation on the bank of a river, which works a very large flour-mill built in 1806, and enlarged in 1836, the property of J. Mangan, Esq., in which 7000 barrels of flour may be annually made. There is a market on Saturday, for agricultural produce, at which much business is transacted ; and fairs for cattle and sheep are held on May 10th, Aug. 11th, and Nov. 7th ; there is also a very large pig fair on March 17th and on the Saturday preceding Easter-Sunday. The roads in the vicinity are kept in excellent order. Two mail coaches come into the town ; one from Dublin, which arrives at 10 A. M. and returns at 4 P. M, ; the other passes through daily from Galway to Limerick, and from Limerick to Galway. Here are an hotel, a revenue police and a chief constabulary police station, which has dependent stations at Ardrahan, Ballytiven, Granagh, Maryville, Noggira, Normongrove, Tubber, Tiernevan, and Killafin. Petty sessions are held every Saturday, and the October quarter sessions for the county are held in the court-house, which was erected in the square in 1815, and comprises a court-hall, grand and petty jury rooms, and keepers' rooms. Here is also a bridewell, built in 1814, and containing two cells, a magistrates' room, and keepers' apartments; but being now too small, is about to be rebuilt. Barracks have existed at Gort for a very long period, and £7000 have been lately expended in building houses for officers and store-rooms ; they will now accommodate S officers, 88 men, and 116 horses. The church, which is the parish church of Kilmacduagh, was erected in 1810, by a loan of £1400 from the late Board of First Fruits, on land given by the first Lord Gort. It is an elegant cruciform building with a conical spire, and was repaired by a loan of £600 from the same Board, in 1828: the interior is handsomely fitted up with galleries and pews. A new street will be opened from Bridge-street to the church, from which a fine view of it will be obtained. The R. C. chapel was built in 1825, on a site given by Lord Gort, and at an expense of £1300, defrayed by subscription: it is a substantial cruciform building, and contains a fine paintng of the Holy Trinity, presented by Lord Gort. The infirmary, which has been recently built, contains two wards, a keeper's room, and a surgery.

The scenery in the vicinity of the town is very beautiful, comprising on the west the Burren mountains in the county of Clare, and on the east the Derrybrien, Castle Daly, and Roxborough mountains. The chief seat is Loughcooter Castle, the residence of Viscount Gort, proprietor of the town, from which he takes his title. It is a noble castellated building, erected at an immense expense, in a well-planted demesne abounding with game, by the present peer, from designs by Mr. Nash, and commanding very fine woodland, lake, and mountain views. In front of the castle is Lough Cooter, a beautiful lake three miles long, containing seven well-wooded islands, and abundance of pike, trout, perch, and eels. Besides this magnificent residence, there are many other seats near the town, which are enumerated in the articles on the surrounding parishes. In its vicinity is a river that has a subterraneous course for a considerable distance : it rises in Lough Cooter, passes through a deep ravine till it reaches "the Ladle," a precipitous hollow clothed to the water's edge with large trees, where it sinks under a perpendicular rock. About 100 yards from this spot it re-appears in "the Punch-bowl," a circular basin about thirty yards in diameter and at least fifty deep: a pathway leads down the sides of this pit, which are very steep and clothed with trees. After flowing about 300 yards from the Punch-bowl it emerges, takes the name of the Blackwater, and after running rapidly for a short distance again disappears. At the "Beggarman's Hole," a smaller circular basin than the Punch-bowl, it is again visible, and soon afterwards enters the "Churn," which is like an extremely deep well, ten feet in diameter. A quarter of a mile from the Churn it re-appears from under a beautiful arch formed by nature in the rock, passes through the town, and about a mile from it sinks again, and after alternately appearing and disappearing, once more flows by a subterraneous channel into the bay of Kinvarra.

KILMACDUAGH

KILMACDUAGH, a parish, and the seat of a diocese, in the barony of KILTARTAN, county of GALWAY, and province of CONNAUGHT, at the junction of the roads from Ennis to Galway and Ballinasloe ; containing, with part of the post-town of Gort, 3770 inhabitants. This see was founded by St. Colman, son of Duach, of the noble family of Hy Fiacrii of Connaught, distinguished from other Colmans, his cotemporaries, by the appellation of Mac Duach, and who, after seven years strict seclusion, about the year 620 fixed his residence at this place, where he built a monastery and church, called after him Kilimac-Duach, whence the diocese has taken its name. It was amply endowed by Guair, then King of Connaught, and subsequently by his successors. Mac Duach presided over the diocese till his death, and of his successors previously to the arrival of the English, the name of one only, Indrect, occurs, who died in 814. Maurice,bishop of this see, who died in 1283, erected on the site of the original foundation, at a short distance from the present cathedral church, a monastery for Augustinian canons, which subsisted till the Reformation, when it was granted to the Earl of Clanrickarde. Stephen Kerovan, who was consecrated in 1573, was translated to the see of Clonfert in 1582, from which time this see remained vacant till 1587, when Roland Linch succeeded to the prelacy ; and he being, in 1602, translated to the see of Clonfert, obtained permission to hold this diocese with it in commendam, since which period the two sees continued to be always held together, till the recent death of the Right Rev. Dr. Butson, when both were annexed to the see of Killaloe, and the temporalities vested in the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, under the provisions of the Church Temporalities Act of the 3rd and 4th of Win. IV. It is one of the six that constitute the Ecclesiastical province of Tuam, and is wholly within the county of Galway, comprising an estimated superficies of 64,000 acres. The lands belonging to the see comprise 3950- statute acres, and the gross revenue, on an average of three years ending Dec. 31st, 1831, amounted to £875. The Quarta Pars still prevails in this diocese, the bishop receiving one-fourth part of the tithes of every parish. The chapter consists of a dean, archdeacon, treasurer, precentor, and provost, with the two prebendaries of Kinvarra and Island-Eddy: there are neither minor canons nor vicars choral, and there is no economy fund. The total number of parishes in the diocese is 21, comprised in four unions or benefices, of which one is in the patronage of the Crown, one in that of the Marquess of Clanrickarde, one in that of the Bishop, and one in the alternate patronage of the Bishop and the Marquess of Clanrickarde. There are four churches, and one other building in which divine service is performed, and four glebe-houses. The cathedral, which is also the parish church, is a neat modern edifice, situated in the town of Gort. In the R. C. divisions the diocese is united with that of Kilfenora, and comprises 11 parochial benefices or unions, containing 14 chapels, which are served by 15 clergymen, of whom 11 are parish priests and 4 coadjutors or curates. The parochial benefice of the bishop is Kinvarra, where he resides.

The parish comprises 6015 statute acres, of which about 600 are waste and exhausted bog, and the remainder in a tolerable state of cultivation ; from the exhausted state of the bogs, fuel is scarce. The living is a vicarage, episcopally united from time immemorial to the vicarage of Kilbeaconty and the rectory of Kiltarton, together constituting the union and corps of the deanery of Kilmacduagh, in the patronage of the Crown ; the rectory is appropriate to the treasurership and precentorship of the cathedral church of St. Colman. The tithes amount to £222. 6. 2, of which £70 is payable to the treasurer, £60 to the precentor, and £92. 6. 2. to the dean ; the gross annual value of the deanery, including tithes and glebe, is £452. 13. 10-. The church, towards the erection of which the late Board of First Fruits granted a loan of £1400, in 1814, is a handsome modern edifice in Gort. The same Board, in 1812, contributed a gift of £300 and a loan of £500 towards the erection of the deanery-house: the glebe of the union comprises 4- acres. The R. C. parish is co-extensive with that of the Established Church, and has two chapels, one at Gort, a large slated building, and one of smaller dimensions at Taernevin, which is a plain thatched building. There are four private schools, in which are about 220 children. Some remains of the monastery built on the site of the ancient abbey founded by St. Colman yet exist to the north-west of the cathedral, and are situated on a neck of land between two loughs: they consist chiefly of the church, which, though small, appears to have been of very elegant design ; to the south of the church is the sacristy, and adjoining it is an arched room in which probably were deposited the valuable effects belonging to the establishment, and to the south of these are the chapel and refectory. To the north, about two feet from the church, is an old wall, which, according to tradition, belonged to a place for penance ; and near it is a holy well, with a circular enclosure. Near the site of the church is an ancient round tower, which declines about 17 feet from the perpendicular. In a lake in the parish, called Lough Deehan, the waters having sunk very low in the year 1784 or 1785, a house was discovered in the mud at the bottom, formed of oak timber of great thickness, the sides and roof of which were formed of wattle-work of the same substance ; it appeared as if intended to float, and the timber of which it was constructed was perfectly sound.