Parish of Old Connaught

Parish of Old Connaught

This parish is returned in the seventeenth century as containing the townlands of Little Bray, Ballyman, Connaught, Cork, and Phrompstown.

It now contains the townlands of Annaghaskin (i.e., the morass of the eels), Aske (i.e., the stream track), Ballyman *(i.e., *the town of the women), Bray Commons, Cork Great and Little, Little Bray, Old Connaught, Phrompstown *(i.e., *the town of Fromp), and Ravenswell.

There are several wells in the parish, including St. Charles’s well, Broderick’s well, Ravens’ well, St. Kevin’s well, and Vallombrosa well.

The objects of antiquarian interest include the ruined churches of Ballyman and Old Connaught, and a castle in Little Bray. **

Little Bray and its Neighbourhood.**

The handsome residences, Old Conna Hill, the seat of Captain Lewis Riall, D.L., and Old Connaught House, the seat of Lord Plunket, are in the present day the principal objects of interest in the parish of Old Connaught - a parish which extends from the parish of Rathmichael to the river of Bray and the County Wicklow, and is bounded on the eastern side, like Rathmichael parish, by the sea.

But in the century following the Anglo-Norman Conquest, Little Bray, which is now overshadowed by the modern town of Bray on the County Wicklow side of Bray river, was the site of a great feudal castle, and in the succeeding centuries became a place of military importance in the conflict between the inhabitants of the Pale and the Irish tribes.

The name Bray is said to be of Irish origin, derived from the word bri, a hill, and the discovery in the grounds of Old Connaught House of a sepulchral mound containing human skeletons, bones of animals, and earthen vessels indicates that in pagan days the neighbourhood was on one or more occasions the scene of a funeral feast.

Tradition has it that Cork Abbey, the seat of Sir Edward Wingfield Verner, Bart., close to Little Bray, occupies the site of a, Celtic monastic establishment. O’Curry, who was shown in 1837 what was supposed to be a burial place near the modern house, suggests that the lands of Cork may have been the site of a monastery founded by St. Curcagh of Cill Curcaighe, whose festival is celebrated on July 21st.

After the Anglo-Norman conquest Bray became the seat of manorial government for the possessions near Dublin of that brave and noble warrior, Waiter de Rideleford, Lord of Bray, of whom we have heard so often in connection with the history of Merrion and other places. Together with Bray, that great Anglo-Norman invader, who as one of the magnates of Ireland exercised all the rights and privileges of a peer, was granted a great tract of adjacent country described as the lands of the sons of Thorkil, one of the Scandinavian invaders.

This territory appears to have originally embraced Tully Church, which was granted by the sons of Thorkil to the Priory of the Holy Trinity, as well as Glencullen, and probably embraced Balally, a name which, as we have seen, has a, Danish origin. It extended, doubtless, to the lands owned by Walter de Rideleford in the parishes of Cruagh and Tallaght.

Where the town of Little Bray now -stands Walter de Rideleford built a castle which must have been, in his time and in that of his descendants, one of the chief fortresses of the County Dublin. He had another castle, which appears to have been his principal residence, on the lands of Castledermot, in the County Kildare, and a house in Dublin; but doubtless Bray Castle was from time to time visited by its owners, and afforded accommodation for their household, which at one time included Roger the chaplain, Master Alexander the doctor, a gate keeper, a hall keeper, and two armour bearers.

Although Walter de Rideleford’s castle stood on the northern side of Bray river the larger portion of the town of Bray appears then, as now, to have lain on the southern side of the river, which was crossed by what was known as the long ford. In the southern part of the town several religious houses, including the Abbeys of St. Thomas, St. Mary the Virgin, and St. John of Tristledermot, had tenements, which had been granted to them by Walter de Rideleford. These tenements were used by the monks to carry on traffic with the Irish inhabitants in the mountains, and for this traffic a weekly market held on Thursdays gave facilities.

In the case of the Dublin houses*, *the Abbeys of St. Thomas and St. Mary, one of the chief commodities procured appears to have been firewood, which was conveyed to Dublin by sea, probably in small boats, which could navigate the shallow waters of the River Liffey and land their cargoes near the monasteries.

Bray was then a corporate town, and amongst its rulers in the thirteenth century we find one Robert Chapman mentioned as bailiff of the town, and one Philip Makagan, whether a clergyman or not does not appear, mentioned as dean of the town. The residents included a lawless fishing community, for whose misdeeds the town sometimes suffered, and on one occasion a fine was levied on the inhabitants owing to bodies having been buried without an inquest and wreckage having been concealed.

An Irish family seems to have taken its cognomen from the place, and towards the close of the thirteenth century one of its members, Robert de Bray, who supplied the viceroy with skins and sent wine to Wales for the use of the English army, filled the office of mayor of Dublin.

The lands of Cork, which extended along the sea shore from Little Bray to the lands of Shanganagh, then called Kiltuck, were in the year 1200 owned by the -Crown, and were held under it by Fulk de Cantilupe.

A few years later there were unsuccessful negotiations for their purchase from him on the part of the chief governor of Ireland, Meyler FitzHenry, a natural son of Henry I.

Afterwards the Crown resumed possession of the lands, and they were leased for a time to the Priory of the Holy Trinity, then the owner of the adjoining lands of Kiltuck, and subsequently, towards the close of the thirteenth century, to Geoffrey de Lysenham, who was a subject of the King of France.

On the western side of Little Bray, beyond the lands of Old Connaught, which were part of Walter de Rideleford’s manor, lay the lands of Glenmunder or Ballyman, on which, in a lovely wooded glen close to a stream, some remains of a church are still to be seen. These lands were held in the thirteenth century by the Knights Templars, who then had a house near Dublin at Ciontarf (3).

The manor of Bray was included in the possessions assigned to the Crown by the de Ridelefords’ descendant, Christiana de Marisco, already mentioned under Merrion, and before 1290 the manor had been granted to Sir Theobald Butler, an ancestor of the house of Ormonde, who was then owner of Arklow, for the service of an armed horseman to be sent when required fully equipped to the gate of Dublin Castle.

Amongst the largest tenants in the manor of Bray in 1284 were the Knights Templars, who held lands granted to them by John de Lisbon and J. de Howth; William le Deveneis, who has been mentioned as succeeding the de Ridelefords at Merrion; John Clements; Robert the Baker, whose holding adjoined the castle; Walter de Belinges; and the Vicar of Bray, “Sir John the father,” who rented the fishery.

At the time of the Bruce invasion, in 1313, Bray, as well as Arklow and Newcastle M’Kynnekan, was burned by the O’Tooles and O’Byrnes, who, as we are told, then warred openly against the King, and the lands around the town lay waste for many years. Sir Hugh de Lawless, a member of the family which, as stated under Rathmichael; became all powerful in the district, was appointed by the Crown in 1314 Constable of Bray manor, but resigned his commission five years later, stating that the lands, which, on the arrival of the Scotch enemies of the King, had been invaded, burned and totally devastated by the Irish of the mountains, were still unprofitable and uncultivated. His only personal advantage from the custody of the manor had been a gift of two salmon, but on his remitting such rents as he had received for the Crown they were returned to him as some compensation for his efforts to uphold English rule.

Subsequently, as we have seen under Tallaght, in order to protect the inhabitants of the district, a line of military stations was maintained between Bray and that place. At Bray, where the Pale seems to have been specially open to attack, a fortress was constructed out of the ruins of Walter de Rideleford’s castle, which had not escaped the general destruction, and Geoffrey Crump, who was in 1334 given a lease of the manor, was freed from rent for two years on condition that he completed that work.

For the garrison at Bray a militia force was raised, as has been mentioned, by a levy on the land owners between Dublin and Bray, including the Priory of the Holy Trinity in respect of Kill of the Grange, and the Abbey of St. Mary the Virgin in respect of Monkstown. Heavy as well as light horsemen and archers were supplied, but at times the militia proved inefficient, and in 1355 the garrison at Bray, finding themselves unequal to keeping the enemy in check, was replaced by chosen mounted men at arms, twenty light horsemen, and forty archers, under the command of Sir John de Bermingham.

The Archbolds, who are classed as protectors of the Pale with the Walshes of Carrickmines and the Harolds of Whitechurch, appear in that century at Bray as tenants of the town on the southern side of the river then called Much Bray. Maurice Howel, in the early part of that century, had accounted to the Crown for the Bray rents, but in the latter half of the century the Archbolds and the Lawlesses seem to have been the chief inhabitants. Maurice Lawless, William Archbold, and James Lawless are successively mentioned as farmers under the Crown of Bray manor, while in 1368 Hugh Lawless was tried for unjustly ejecting William, son of Thomas Lawless, from the lands of Old Connaught.

The state of war still continued. William Lawless was, we are told, slain about 1394 while protecting the frontiers of the Pale; but the necessities of the time required that guard should not be relaxed, and at her own expense his widow, Katherine Fitz Eustace, maintained the men who were serving under her husband at their post. Several expeditions were organised at the beginning of the fifteenth century against the Irish, and advanced from Bray into the wilds of the country now comprised in the County Wicklow.

In 1402 the Mayor of Dublin, John Drake, mentioned already in connection with Simmonscourt, encountered with a strong force the Irish near Bray, and is said to have killed 500 of them - a service for which the Corporation of Dublin received the privilege of having a gilt sword carried before them; and in 1429 an army of 1,100 men, with a hundred loads of provisions and machines for hurling stones, assembled there before setting out against the O’Byrnes and O’Tooles.

The lands of Old Connaught and Cork, as well as those of Shanganagh, were at the beginning of the fifteenth century owned by Aveline Lawless, and later on by Hugh Lawless, and seem to have been occupied by the Harolds, as in 1460 custody of the property of one Walter Harold, at Old Connaught, was granted to John, son of Reginald Talbot. The lands of Ballyman had before that passed from the Knights Templars into the possession of the Priory of St. John of Jerusalem at Kilmainham, and in 1336 we find one of the Harolds indicted for stealing timber from the house of the Prior at Ballyman, then called Glenmunder.

In the sixteenth century all the lands in the parish of Old Connaught came into the possession of the Walshes, excepting those of Ballyman. These, after the dissolution of the religious houses, were granted to Peter Talbot, the defender of the Pale mentioned under Rathmichael. The Walshes of Shanganagh were in possession of the lands of Old Connaught and Cork, while the Walshes of Carrickmines occupied those of Phrompstown.

Members of these families resided upon the various lands, and we find on Cork in 1566, William M’Shane Walsh and Edward Walsh, in 1590 Walter Walsh, and in 1599 Edmund Walsh, who died in that year, desiring to be buried at Rathmichael; and on Phrompstown, in 1609 Edmund Walsh, who died in that year, desiring to be buried at Tully.

The manners and customs of the time are curiously illustrated in a pardon granted in 1566 to a number of the inhabitants of the neighbourhood. This document recites that William Walsh, of Cork, described as a gentleman, assisted by a kern, had taken from an Irish widow at Glencree a brass pan, two gallons of butter, three sheep, a night gown, two gowns, and a cloak; for which offence William Walsh had been arrested at Old Connaught by the sub-sheriff. As the latter was bringing his prisoner along the highway to Dublin he was set upon near Shanganagh and his prisoner taken from him by a number of the neighbours, described as gentlemen, yeomen, horsemen and kerns, and including John Walsh of Shanganagh, James Goodman of Loughlinstown, and Edmund Walsh of Cork. The services of these delinquents were too valuable to the Crown to be lost; the offence was treated as a light and trivial one, a free pardon was forthwith issued to all concerned, and almost immediately afterwards two of the principal offenders, John Walsh and James Goodman, were appointed commissioners for the muster of the Militia.

On the lands of Old Connaught the Walshes of Shanganagh erected in the seventeenth century a dwelling which is shown by the fact that it had five chimneys, to have been a large house, although the roof was only of thatch, and which was surrounded by an orchard, garden, and grove of ash trees.

In it James Walsh, already mentioned as one of the owners of Shanganagh, was residing in 1630, when Archbishop Bulkeley made his report on the Dublin diocese, and in it he maintained, the Archbishop states, several priests and friars.

With the exception of fourteen poor labourers all the inhabitants of Old Connaught were Roman Catholics, and for the education of their children Walsh supported in the village a schoolmaster of that faith, one Garret Warren.

After the rebellion of 1641 the few English settlers were driven away, and the lands within the parish came under the rule of the Confederate party. In depositions made after the rebellion William Pigeon, of Ballyman, relates how, on coming down one day from the old castle which then stood there, he was assaulted “by three score lusty rebels,” and forced to flee to Dublin; and Frances Tuke, of Phrompstown, relates that her servants were unable to protect her cattle and goods from the assaults of the insurgents.

In the year following the rebellion the neighbouring castle of Fassaroe, in the County Wicklow, was stormed and taken by the English, but the cannon which had been employed were afterwards removed, and subsequently one of the stations occupied by the Confederate troops was Much Bray, which at the close of the sixteenth century had been returned as one of the principal villages near Dublin, and whose owners, the Archbolds, were then stated to be men of name in the county.

After the establishment of the Commonwealth the Waishes’ property in Old Connaught parish, including the lands of Old Connaught, Cork, and part of Little Bray, was leased to Major Henry Jones, of whom we have seen under Stillorgan, but subsequently came, together with the other lands in the parish, into the possession of John Baxter.

The other lands included Ballyman, which at the time of the rebellion belonged to Colonel Ponsonby, and the remainder of Little Bray, which at the time of the rebellion was divided between the Earl of Meath, Viscount Fitzwilliam, and William Wolverston of Stillorgan-the old castle of Little Bray being on the land owned by the last-named. At the close of the Commonwealth period we find on the lands of Phrompstown ten Irish inhabitants, on the lands of Little Bray eleven English and fifteen Irish, on the lands of Old Connaught ten English and sixty-seven Irish, the chief person connected with that place being then Edward Billingsley; and on the lands of Ballyman six English and thirty-one Irish, the chief person connected with that place being Henry Bennett.

Some years after the Restoration the Walshes’ house at Old Connaught was occupied by John Baxter, and in the village there were thirty-one householders, including “Thomas ye weaver.” In Little Bray the Widow Rooney, whose house had two chimneys and two hearths, and Isaac Grey, whose house had two chimneys and one hearth, were the principal householders; and there were eight others, including “William ye carman,” and “Thomas ye weaver.” In the old castle of Ballyman, which had a thatched roof and two chimneys, William Walsh was residing, and there was near it a small village containing eleven cottages.

After the restoration of their property to the Walshes more members of the family appear in the distnct. In 1665 we find Mrs. Mary Walsh at Cork, and in 1698 Edward Walsh, a brother of John Walsh of Shanganagh, died at Old Connaught House. But about the year 1684 the Walshes’ interest in Little Bray was purchased from them by Jeremy Donovan, a prominent member of the Irish parliament of James II., and owner of a house in Dublin called “Donovan’s Arms” in Back Lane.

At the time of the Commonwealth the river of Bray-then described as a fair river called Bray water-was still crossed by a ford, which was “a very difficult pass” after any great rain; but before the close of the seventeenth century a bridge appears to have been erected, and we are told that after the battle of the Boyne James II., on his flight to Waterford, left two troops of horse at Bray to protect the bridge and prevent pursuit.

Fifty years later, in 1741, it is mentioned that one end of Bray bridge had been carried away during a great fall of rain, and the other end had been so shaken that it was expected the whole structure would be borne away by the floods. In spite of the increased facility for intercourse the neighbourhood of Bray on the Wicklow side of the river was then looked upon as a disaffected district, and barracks were built near Bray church, in which a company of soldiers was kept until the close of the eighteenth century.

Residents of importance began to settle in the parish of Old Connaught near Little Bray early in that century. Chief amongst these were Mr. Arthur Bushe, who resided at Cork, and Richard Earl of Anglesey, whose house was near Bray Commons. Mr. Arthur Bushe, who was a collateral ancestor of the famous orator and lawyer, Chief Justice Bushe, was an officer in the revenue department, where he enjoyed the friendship of Sir Robert South-well, and for many years represented the borough of Thomastown in the Irish Parliament. He was succeeded at Cork by his younger son, the Rev. John Bushe, who was for some years vicar of Bray, and who died in 1746 at Cork.

The Earl of Anglesey was the defendant in the well-known Annesley peerage case, and his life at Bray, as disclosed after his death in proceedings before the House of Lords with regard to fresh claims to his titles, must have been the occasion of great scandal. He resided there a good deal, and we find announcements in 1741 of his organising great rejoicings, and distributing beer amongst the soldiers and other residents at Bray, in celebration of- the victory of the British arms at Cartagena, and in 1743 of his setting out from Dunleary, where he had landed from England, for his seat at Bray. That Lord Annesley’s establishment was considerable may be inferred from the fact that in 1751 as many as 150 dozen of wine were stolen out of his cellars there.

The family of Roberts, now represented by Captain Lewis Riall, D.L., appear about the middle of the eighteenth century as owners of the Walshes’ property in Old Connaught parish, which, as already mentioned, passed to them with the. Waishes’ possessions at Shanganagh. The first of the family connected with Old Connaught was Mr. Lewis Roberts. He was the eldest son of the eminent doctor of laws- and member of Parliament for Dungarvan, Dr. Robert Roberts, already mentioned as a resident of Monks-town, and was a cousin of Dr. William Roberts, who resided at Coldblow near Donnybrook. They were descended from an ancient Welsh family, of which the father of Dr. William Roberts appears to have been the first member to come to Ireland. After obtaining possession of the Old Connaught property, Mr. Lewis Roberts, although he does not appear to have resided on them, reclaimed the lands, and in 1765 the thanks and gold medal of the Dublin Society were voted to him for preserving some 38,000 forest trees which had been planted at Old Connaught in the previous fifteen years. He was succeeded there by his son, Mr. John Roberts, who built Old Conna Hill, and it is through the marriage of Mr. John Roberts’ daughter in 1801 to Mr. Charles Riall that the estate has come to its present owner.

Towards the close of the eighteenth century, in the year 1776, the Walshes’ old residence, Old Connaught House, then occupied by Alderman Willoughby Lightburne, was the scene of a disastrous fire, which entirely consumed the house, although fortunately no lives were lost. Subsequently, in the year 1783, the lands on which the house had stood were purchased by the Right Rev. William Gore, Bishop of Limerick, who rebuilt the residence, but did not live to enjoy it, as his death took place in the following yea.

Amongst other residents besides Mr. John Roberts we find about this time Sir William Hawkins, Ulster King of Arms, who resided in a house called Bolton Hall, the Right Hon. Theophilus Jones, who resided at Cork, and the Right Hon. John Monck Mason, an uncle of the historian of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, and himself an author as well as a politician, who resided at Thornhill. **

Ecclesiastical History**

Within the parish of Old Connaught there are the remains of two churches, one situated close to the village of Old Connaught and the other standing on the lands of Ballyman. Mr. Eugene O’Curry formed the opinion that others had existed within the parish, but no trace of them is now to be found. Old Connaught Church is a small late oratory thirty-three feet ten inches long and nineteen feet three inches wide externally. The east window has a very flat arched spley badly cracked. There are only small slits in the north and west walls, but in the south wall there are two plain ambries, a small oblong window, and the gap of the defaced door. The west wall is surmounted by a bell chamber. The masonry is poor and late, with many rounded stones. Of Ballyman Church only a fragment stands, consisting of the east and part of the south wall. In the latter there is a window with a lintel made of one of the early tombstones inscribed with concentric markings.

Of the history of these churches little is known. Ballyman Church, then called Glenmunder, is twice mentioned after the Anglo-Norman conquest - in 1294 as valued at four marks, and in 1303 as held with the Church of Killegar near the Scalp by Master Richard de Musselwyt, but probably it had fallen into disuse before the Reformation.

The early history of Old Connaught Church, owing to the extinction of the ancient names in this district, has not as yet been discovered. It first appears under its present name in the regal visitation of 1615, when it was attached to Bray and stated to be in good repair, and it is again mentioned in Archbishop Bulkeley’s report in 1630, when it was stated to be in a ruinous state, and only attended by about fourteen poor labourers. Thomas Davis had then charge of the cure, as well as of those of Kiltiernan and Monkstown. During the troublous times that followed the church became unroofed, and does not appear to have been again used for service.

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