Parish of Saggart

Parish of Saggart.

*(Formerly called Tasagart, i.e., Teach Sacra yr Sacra’s House). *

This parish appears in the seventeenth century as containing the townlands of Saggart, Newtown, and Coolmine.

It now contains the townlands of Boherboy *(i.e., *the yellow road), Brownsbarn, Coldwater Commons, Cooldown Commons, Coolmine *(i.e., *the smooth hill back), Crooksling, Fortunestown, Glenaraneen, Lugg *(i.e., *the hollow), Moneenalion *(i.e., *the little bog of the flax) Commons Upper and Lower, Newtown Upper and Lower, Raheen *(i.e., *the little rath), Saggart, Slade *(i.e., *the mountain stream).

Amongst the objects of archaeological interest dating from primeval times to be found In this parish are, near the village of Saggart two pillar stones known locally as Adam and Eve; in the townlands of Raheen a pillar stone and a cairn known as Rathin bank; in the townland of Glenaraneen a sepulchral mound known as the hungry hill; in the townland of Crooksling a rath known as the place of the kings; and in the townland of Lugg a cairn called the moat of the hill of the burning.

There is also a well called Tobar-na-gcluas, or the ear well, which is supposed to have curative power, and one known as St. Patrick’s well. **

The Village of Saggart and its Neighbourhood.**

Passing from the parishes on the eastern to those on the western side of Tallaght, the parish of Saggart is next reached. It is bounded to the south and north as well as to the east by the parish of Tallaght, but on the southern side is separated from the Counties of Wicklow and Kildare only by a narrow projecting piece of Tallaght parish. Within its limits are to be found some remains of prehistoric times; but the relics of later periods in this parish are few and unimportant, the only one deserving mention being part of a small castle which is incorporated in a modern building in the village.

The village of Saggart, which lies between the villages of Tallaght and Rathcoole, and is. approached either from the road from Tallaght to Blessington, or from the great southern highroad near Rathcoole, was situated just within the barrier of the Pale; and the lands of Saggart suffered, equally with those already mentioned in this part of the history, from the war between the Irish tribes and the inhabitants of the Pale.

After the Anglo-Norman Conquest, the lands of Saggart, together with those of Newcastle Lyons, Esker, and Crumlin, were retained as Crown property, and became one of the four royal manors now embraced in the barony of Newcastle. Although they bordered on the primeval forests which in 1229* *Archbishop Luke was given license to clear, the lands of Saggart were then producing considerable profit, and in 1235 the rental amounted to £75 2s. 4d., which would represent not less than ten times as much in the present day.

The lands were leased to middlemen, and towards the close of the thirteenth century we find a number of persons mentioned as paying rent or farm for them to the Crown. A mill at Saggart and the pleas and perquisites of the manor court were also sources of revenue to the royal exchequer. The Court fees were leased like the lands for a fixed yearly sum, and in 1291 two of the Saggart tenants had to find security to keep the peace owing to the opposition which they had offered to the lessee, one Henry de Compton, clerk.

The tenants on the royal manors were supposed to be greatly under the dominion of the Crown officials, and on one occasion, in 1290, it is mentioned that the defendant in an action, in which the clerk of the Treasurer of Ireland was plaintiff, challenged the jury on the ground that it was composed of men from the King’s demesne of Saggart-conduct which, we are told, the judges saw to be low cunning only worthy of a thief.

As in the case of Bray, a leading mercantile family in Dublin took its cognomen from Saggart; in 1282 John and Richard de Tasagart were paid for thirteen hogsheads of wine sent to Wales for the King’s use, and later on John accounted at Drogheda for duty on wines.

The lands of Saggart early felt the effect of the incursions of the Irish tribes, as shown in a recommendation made in 1272 by the King’s serjeant, one Robert Owen, that lands at Saggart “near the land of war” should be exchanged for lands at Newcastle Lyons “near the land of peace.” At first, when raids from the Irish tribes were threatened, the Crown carefully guarded its property at Saggart. For the protection of that place we find payments made in 1276 to Geoffrey le Bret of Rathfarnham, and to a man called Garget; in 1277 to Hugh de Cruise, who for his services in the Irish war was afterwards granted the custody of the royal manors; to Wolfran de Barnewall and Reginald Typer; and in 1282 and 1294 to John Riryth, who on the latter occasion guarded, it is said, with an armed force the lands of Saggart and Newcastle Lyons “against the Irish of the mountains of Leinster, felons and rebels”.

Amongst the other lands now comprised in the parish of Saggart are those of Coolmine and Newtown. The lands of Coolmine were in the thirteenth century the property of the Bermingham family, but were in 1303 conveyed by Peter, son of James Bermingham, who had purchased the fee from Richard, son of Lord Maurice Bermingham, to Peter Hacket.

About twenty years later these lands became the property of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, and were assigned by the Dean and Chapter to the Economy Fund, the tenants’ interest being conveyed to that establishment by Geoffrey Grump, already mentioned under Old Connaught, and the landlord’s interest by Elena le Petit and John Hacket, the widow and son of Peter Hacket. The lands of Newtown, which are completely cut off from the rest of Saggart parish, and form an isolated town land in the parish of Rathcoole, belonged to the Archbishop of Dublin, and constituted the smallest of the manors owned by him.

In the accounts kept during the vacancy in the See of Dublin from 1271 to 1277 the receipts from Newtown included, as in the case of the other manors, rents from freeholders, betaghs, and cottagers, and profit from the work of the tenants and from tribute beer, as well as profit from food which the tenants supplied for the Archbishop’s seneschal, and from fines paid on the decease of tenants.

The reign of fire and sword in the beginning of the fourteenth century reached Saggart as well as other places similarly situated. In the year 1311, on the morrow of St. John the Baptist’s day, as we are told, the O’Tooles and O’Byrnes invaded the lands of Saggart and Rathcoole, and although a great army was afterwards sent into their territory to reduce them to obedience, their invasions did not cease for some time.

When the survey of the Archbishop of Dublin’s property was made in 1326, portion of Newtown was returned as waste and unprofitable, and the work of the tenants was stated to be worth nothing, as the betaghs had all fled; and three years later we find the rent of Coolmine reduced by the Hackets on condition that it was paid punctually whether there was peace or war.

In the middle of that century, in the year 1359, there is again mention of raids on Saggart, and, as we have seen under Dundrum, William Fitzwilliam of that place, who was accompanied by one of the Harolds, performed valiant service in rescuing prey which the Irish tribes were carrying off, and in killing five of the King’s enemies.

Saggart must have been a large village at that time. It was ruled by an official holding the position of a portreeve or sovereign, an office which we find held in 1432 by Richard Aylmer, an ancestor of the Lyons family, and from the fact that a gate, called the common gate, is mentioned in an old deed, was evidently enclosed by walls.

The custody of the manor was granted from time to time by the Crown to various persons, but during the fifteenth century the royal manors were greatly neglected, and at the beginning of the sixteenth century the King’s lands were stated to be of all others the worst and most wasted.

The only events of importance recorded to have occurred at Saggart for the next hundred years are in connection with warfare. In 1535, after the rebellion of Silken Thomas, it was one of the places where war was waged between the forces of the Crown and the Geraldines, who had been granted an interest in the place under the King.

Twenty years later, in the reign of Queen Mary, we find four horse soldiers, and the boys by whom they were attended, stationed there. And during the rebellion of Viscount Baltinglas, in 1580, that nobleman, accompanied by Feagh M’Hugh and 500 men, descended on Saggart and burned that village, and afterwards such buildings as stood on the lands of Coolmine.

At the close of that century the men of name in Saggart included the Dens, who appear first as residents at Saggart in the reign of Queen Mary, the Founts, and the Prestons; and earlier in that century we catch a glimpse of less important inhabitants in a pardon granted to an Irish kern and a tanner of Saggart for respectively stealing and receiving two brass pots.

Amongst the owners of property in Saggart we find the Handcocks, who were prominent citizens of Dublin; and in the reign of James I. Sir Andrew Savage and Sir Henry Ffolliott were granted property there, some of which had been forfeited by one Edward Byrne. The lands of Coolmine, on which there was a castle and which comprised some 250 acres, were then held under St. Patrick’s Cathedral by John Allen, to whom a long lease of them had been granted at a rent of *£2 *a year-a proceeding which caused Dean Swift to characterise the grantors as rascals, knaves, and fools.

After the rebellion of 1641, the manor of Saggart, which had been granted in 1620 to Sir William Parsons, already mentioned as obtaining much property in the neighbourhood, and the other lands now comprised in Saggart parish were for a time completely under the dominion of the Irish party.

Some of the residents, including a yeoman called Anthony Jenkinson, who sustained great loss, were obliged to leave; and others, including James Allen of Coolmine, and George Graham of Saggart, joined the Irish forces. In the January following the outbreak of the rebellion, the Irish sent 500 men to Saggart and Rathcoole, but they were soon marched off to Drogheda, and before the close of that month the village was burned by a party of 200 horse under the command of Sir Thomas Armstrong, as he afterwards became, who were sent out from Dublin by the Government to deprive the Irish of these places of refuge.

Before the Restoration the village had recovered some measure of prosperity. It was then stated to contain two castles in repair, and the remains of another castle, as well as some thatched houses and cabins. The soil in the parish was then considered good, except in the southern part of the parish, where it was stated to be coarse and mountainous.

The residents in the village and on the lands of Saggart numbered eighteen of English and fifty-eight of Irish descent, inhabiting thirty-one houses, while on the lands of Newtown there were four houses, and on the lands of Coolmine the same number.

Throughout the remainder of that century, and in the following century, the Dens continued to be the principal inhabitants in Saggart. In 1682 Thomas Den was given the right of holding a weekly market and three yearly fairs there, and in 1705 John Den, and in 1741 Philip Den, died there.

Saggart was visited in the summer of 1780 by Austin Cooper, and is described by him as a small village. He expresses much admiration of the adjoining glen, and mentions that the stream which flows through it was artificial, and was originally brought from Aghfarrel in Tallaght parish to supply power for powder mills. Besides some ruins of’ the ancient church which were then to be seen, the only object of antiquarian interest was the castle, which was then covered, as it is in the present day, by modern plaster. **

Ecclesiastical History**

Saggart** **was in Celtic times the site of a monastery, and derives its name from St. Sacer or Mo Sacra, the founder or first abbot of that establishment, whose festival is celebrated on March 3rd. A church dedicated to him stood upon the lands, and after the Anglo-Norman Conquest, when Saggart became a royal manor, this church was served by a cleric known as the King’s clerk.

In 1207 an enquiry was directed to ascertain what lands appertained to the churches of Saggart and Esker and belonged to Bartholomew the King’s clerk, and it was ordered that if any houses belonging to the King had been built on them an exchange should be made.

Subsequently Saggart, or Tasagart, as it was then called, became a prebend in the Cathedral of St. Patrick. At that time there were two chapels within the limits of the parish subservient to the parent church. One of these was on the lands of Newtown, of which remains, including a font, were found in 1837 by Mr. Eugene O’Curry. Its site is marked on the Ordnance map as a graveyard. The other known as Simon Tallaght was on the lands of Coolmine; its site is also marked on the Ordnance map near what is described as the site of a monastery. Of the parent church there is no further record until the reign of Edward VI., when on the dissolution of the Cathedral the prebend of Tasagart, “with the parson’s croft,” was leased to Archbishop Browne.

At the time of the regal visitation of 1615 the church was stated to be in good repair and provided with books, and was then served by the prebendary, the Rev. Roger Danby, “a very sufficient preacher,” and his curate, the Rev. Emanuel Bullock. Fifteen years later the church is stated to have fallen down, and the Protestant parishioners, who then numbered about thirty, attended Rathcoole church.

The prebend, which was held by the Dean of Kildare, William Cleburne, was valued at £30 per annum, and although there was no church in which to hold service, the prebendary appointed curates to serve the parish. In 1630 the Rev. Robert Jones, the Vicar of Lucan, is returned as the curate, and from 1639 to 1647 the Rev. John Heath, the curate of Crumlin, was in charge. From that time the history of the Established Church in the parish merges in that of Rathcoole, and there is only the site of the church, near which a font was found, now to be seen.

Saggart was joined with Newcastle in the seventeenth century by the Roman Catholic Church for the purposes of administration. In the reign of Queen Mary the prebend had been held by the well-known Archbishop Dowdall, and doubtless from that time Roman Catholic clergy had been appointed to the parish; but it is not for more than a century that the names of the parish priests can be found. Since then the succession is complete, and is as follows : -1670, Rev. William (Canon) Brett; 1714, Rev. Richard (Canon) Purfield; 1730, Rev. Dr. James (Canon) O’Toole; 1760, Rev. Simon BarTow; 1794, Rev. James Harold, who was arrested in 1798, tried by court-martial, and transported to Botany Bay; 1798, Rev. Laurence Byrne; 1810, Rev. Andrew Hart; 1815, Rev. James Campbell; 1832, Rev. John Dunn; 1853, Rev. Christopher (Canon) Burke; 1873, Rev. Thomas M’Cormack; 1876, Rev. Michael Barry; 1884, Rev. James Hunt; 1887,, Rev. Michael Walsh; and 1896, Rev. Richard Duggan, the present parish priest.

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