The Bicentenary of Knockbride Church (1825-2025)

Times Past

Jonathan Smyth

My first inkling that Knockbride was a historic parish goes back to my school days. I remember our teacher Mrs Ritchie teaching us the history that lay on our doorstep. Indeed, Knockbride’s Church of Ireland, which overlooks the beautiful waters of Coroneary Lake, at Knockbride East, is I think, one of the most impressive locations to have built a place of worship; and this year it is 200 years old. That is an incredible length of time when you think of all the people who have walked through the doors.

Church is an interesting word, having two meanings, the first is ‘House of God’ and the second is a ‘gathering of the believers’. The same parish was lucky to have produced a keen historian, the late schoolmaster, Tom Barron, who while living in the area, became an active member of the congregation and served for a time as a lay reader. The role allowed him to take the Sunday Service if the minister was out of town.

Knockbride (Cnoic Brid in Irish) refers to the region’s connection to historical Brigid and later to St. Brigid The earliest indication of Christian worship here was a monastery founded circa 439 AD and in terms of early Christianity, we are told of healing waters that emitted from St Brigid’s well, and the same account points to ‘the remnants of’ the ‘17th Century church’ adjoining the present church which still exists on a ‘site that formerly contained a hospital church’.

A survey of churches conducted in 1733 states the original church at Knockbride had wooden floors beneath the altar, possessed a pulpit, and had a thatched roof. Kevin Mulligan who is an authority states that the old Church at Knockbride was ‘possibly pre-Reformation’. Its earliest known vicar was the Rev Robert Taylor who remained overseer of the parish until 1622.

An article from the Bailieborough Community Annual by Tom Barron informs us about the remains of a ‘Wedge Tomb’ at Drumeague, which may have been the burial site of the Cineál Lugair, and adding, it was likely their inauguration mound. He theorises on the possibility that the Cineál Lugair may have buried Brigid in the tomb beside her father in 491 AD and enthuses that two years later Patrick of the Confession may have been interred in the same tomb. If this were true, it would rattle cages around the country where long held historic Christian tradition says otherwise. The accepted view is that in ‘554 AD Colmcille and Patrick’s bones were enshrined in Downpatrick, and Brigid’s remains were enshrined in Kildare’.

In 1978, Tom Barron’s article in the ‘Kilmore, Elphin and Ardagh Diocesan Magazine’ tells of a Rev Alexander McWhidd, rector of the old church and, in recalling the 17th century Minister, he wrote: ‘At the south-east corner of the old church of Knockbride rest the mortal remains of Alexander McWhidd said to have been the first minister to preach in the church. A heavy slab of sandstone covers McWhidd’s grave, but Barron protests, as to why ‘his name was never engraved there on, though several of his descendants have their names now almost obliterated by time, on the stone’ and that one is ‘John McWhidd (1635-1701), who evidently was Alexander’s son, and another John McWhidd (1661-1735) must have been his grandson’. And concludes that ‘all three were said to have taken part in the battle of the Boyne’. He wrote a more detailed paper on Rev McWhidd for the Breifne Journal.

Present day Church

The present day Church was built during the Rev Francis Saunderson’s time. He was appointed rector of Knockbride by the Bishop in March 1819 when his predecessor the Rev Josiah Erskinne died, on St Brigid’s Day, aged 48 years, of the same year. Rev Saunderson was a son of Francis and Anne Saunderson, the lordly owners of Castle Saunderson. Under Saunderson, the work of constructing the new church at Knockbride began and was completed in 1825. The Rev Saunderson then married Catherine Crichton, second daughter of the honourable John Creighton; and granddaughter of the Earl of Erne.

Finance for the project consisted of a donation of £100 and a further £550 received as a loan from the Board of First Fruits. In his book, The Buildings of Ireland: South Ulster, Armagh, Cavan and Monaghan, Kevin Mulligan describes the church as a ‘large rural church’ built in the ‘standard First Fruits hall-and-tower design with a short chancel and a big south aisle’. The structure, says Mulligan, consists of: ‘Rubble with sandstone dressings, hooded Y-tracery and quarry glazing’ while ‘the tower has three stages with ashlar lesene strips to the upper stages before pinnacles and stepped battlements’.

Later, the church was ‘greatly enlarged in 1870’ by architects Welland and Gillespie, with the addition of ‘a twin-gabled north transcept with simple plate tracery and an adjoining lean-to vestry to the east’. Mulligan describes the interior of the church in the following manner: ‘Inside, plain open timber ceilings. Box pews in the nave and a raking gallery with a panelled frontal supported on two impossibly slender iron shafts, modelled as attenuated lotus leaves and ending with a scrolled flourish.’

An account of the church in ‘Knockbride: A History’, by Eugene P. Markey and John Clarke, suggests that ‘a skilled tradesman by the name of Doherty’ may have been the builder of the Church’s ‘bell tower and wings’.

Changes have occurred down the years. The Rectory at Knockbride was sold in 1971 to Mr D. Corrie and various refurbishments sometimes dominated the monthly parish notes in the Diocesan magazine. For example, in 1992, there was a major refurbishment of the church’s exterior supported by a Government FÀS scheme, whereby the plaster was removed and the stonework re-pointed. The story of a church is a community tale and the parish notes offer best wishes for marriages, engagements, births and relate to other matters of church life including funerals.

‘Knockbride: A History,’ notes that amongst the then 70 plus grave markers, there is a headstone to a lady named Ann Brown of Corroneary who died at the age of 108 years, perhaps making her the oldest resident to have ever lived in the parish. An almost complete bound set of the Diocesan magazine going back to 1969 (including the Scribe magazine) can be requested for research on site at Johnston Central Library in Cavan.

Fógra

During Heritage Week (August 23-24), between 4-7pm, an event to commemorate First World War Rifleman Luke Delaney, 2nd Battalion, Royal Irish Rifles, takes place at his restored cottage, Murmod. Best wishes to them.