Parish of Rathcoole

*(i.e., Cumhall’s Rath). *

This parish is returned in the seventeenth century as containing the townlands of Rathcoole, Westmanstown, Johnstown, The College, Rathcreedan, and Calliaghstown.

It now contains the townlands of Badgerhill, Ballynakelly *(i.e., *the town of the wood), Calliaglistown *(i.e., *the town of the nuns) Upper and Lower, Carrigeen *(i.e., *the rocky land), Collegeland, Commons, Crockaunadreenagh (i.e., the little hill of the black thorns), Crockshane *(i.e., *John’s hill), Farmersvale, Glebe, Greenoge *(i.e., *the little sunny spot), Johnstown, Keatingspark, Rathcoole, Rathcreedan *(i.e., *Creedon’s rath), Redgap, Slademore *(i.e., *the great slade or mountain stream), Slievethoul *(i.e., *Tuathal’s or Toole’s mountain), Tootenhill *(i.e., *the burnt hill), and Westmanstown.

The Hill of Saggart, or Slievethoul, is within the parish.

Amongst many objects of archaeological interest dating from primeval times to be found in the townlands of Crockaunadreenagh and Slievethoul are cairns called Knockaniller, or the mount of the eagle, and Knockandinny, or the mount of the man; and a sepulchral mound called the hill of the herd boy.

There are wells known as St. Catherine’s well and St. Bridget’s well.

The Village of Rathcoole and its Neighbourhood

The village of Rathcoole, which was the first stage on the coach road from Dublin to the south of Ireland, and which lies in one of the most important hunting districts near Dublin, is the centre of a parish called by the same name, which extends from the parish of Clondalkin to the County Wicklow, and is bounded to the east by the parish of Saggart.

Besides the village, the only place of interest in the parish of Rathcoole is now Johnstown House, the seat of Sir John Charles Kennedy, Bart., but the townlands of Calliaghstown, or the town of the nuns, which belonged to the Convent of St. Mary de Hogges, already mentioned as owner of the lands of Rathgar, and Rathcreedan, on which was a residence of the Scurlock family, have a forgotten history.

Rathcoole is supposed to derive its name from having been the site of a rath constructed by the father of Fionn Mac Cumhail, the Ossianic hero referred to in connection with Glenasmole, and Mr. O’Curry, when making his explorations for the Ordnance Survey, found near the village what he believed to be remains of a rath.

After the Anglo-Norman Conquest, the lands of Rathcoole appear as the property of the Metropolitan See, and in the thirteenth century they formed one of the smaller manors belonging to the Archbishop of Dublin. No house of importance then stood upon them, and the principal building was a water mill. Besides the receipts for rents and profits such as have already been mentioned in connection with the manors of Tallaght and Shankill, there appear in the account for the manor of Rathcoole during the vacancy in the See after the death of Archbishop Fulk de Saunford, profits from the wardship of an Irishman called Meldiric, and from land belonging to one Joseph Aubry.

A great portion of the lands within Rathcoole manor was under grass, and amongst the lands mentioned within’ it are the water meadows, the grenouille mead or frog meadow, The middle and north flagges or rushy lands, the midway, the haggard, the curragh, and the ox close, as well as common pasture on the mountain of Slievethoul. Amongst the inhabitants towards the close of the thirteenth century we find members of the family of Marshall, and members of another which took its cognomen from the Rath.

The manor of Rathcoole does not appear to have suffered so much as other manors to the south of Dublin from the incursions of the Irish tribes at the time of the Bruce invasion; but a considerable extent of the lands is returned in 1326 as worth nothing from proximity to the Irish, or from being actually in the Irish territory, or from want of stock.

Amongst the unprofitable lands was mountain pasture, called Stacheloch, which was then held by the Priory of the holy Trinity. As in other manors, the betaghs fled from Rathcoole at that time, but the free tenants remained, and the water-mill, markets, and seneschal’s court were all returned as sources of profit.

The village of Rathcoole, which was ruled like Saggart by a portreeve or provost, became in the succeeding centuries a place of considerable importance, and contained several fortified houses.

At the beginning of the sixteenth century, in 1510, a legal document is dated at Rathcoole, probably by a travelling legal official; in 1549 a pardon was granted to three inhabitants of the name of Power, described respectively as a gentleman, a horseman, and a horsekeeper; and in 1558 a soldier living at Rathcoole was pardoned for the murder of John Mey, a husbandman of Kilmactalway.

Amongst owners of property in the village we find the Vicars Choral of St. Patrick’s’ Cathedral, whose property on the dissolution of the Cathedral was leased to James Bathe of Drimnagh; the FitzGeralds; and the Darlases of Maynooth.

The lands of Calliaghstown, after the dissolution of the Convent of St. Mary de Ilogges, were retained by the Crown in its own hands, and in 1552 proceedings were taken by the Crown against Reginald Talbot of Belgard and others for grazing cattle, on the lands of Nunscot, as Calliaghstown was then called.

The first of the Scurlocks who appears as resident at Rathcreedan is Thomas Scurlock, who is described about the year 1470 as of that place; and nearly a hundred years later we find the lands in the possession of the heir of Nicholas Scurlock, lately deceased. Towards the close of that century Rathcreedan was in possession of Martin Scurlock, who was returned amongst the men of name in the county, and owned as well as Rathcreedan property at Castleknock and in other places.

To him, on his death in 1599, succeeded his son Patrick, who was then only a child of eight years old. As an owner of property the boy became a ward of the Crown, and although his mother was alive, the guardianship of his person was committed to one Pierce Edmonds. In the directions for the boy’s education advantage was taken of the newly founded College of the Holy Trinity near Dublin, and it was prescribed that the boy should be educated from his twelfth to his eighteenth year “in the English religion, and in the English apparel,” in Trinity College.

During the rebellion of Viscount Baltinglas in 1580 the Irish, under Feagh M’Hugh, burned Rathcoole at the same time as Saggart and Coolmine. The soldiers, who were ordered to assemble at Belgard in that year, were drawn from Rathcoole, and their defenceless families are said to have been picked out for slaughter. The Master of the Rolls, Nicholas Whyte, was active in trying to save the village, but his efforts were without avail.

Nearly twenty years later, in 1596, Rathcoole again suffered in the war with the Irish, and the Auditor of Ireland, Christopher Peyton, who then owned the village, writes that “his poor town lay waste and unmanned, being pillaged by the rebels and burnt by the soldiers.”

In the rebellion of 1641 Rathcoole was a stronghold of the Irish. The Lords Justices, when transmitting to England in December the alarming intelligence that the rebels of the County Dublin had spoiled all the English even to the gates of Dublin, and that the rebels of the County Wicklow had assembled at Powerscourt to the number of about 1,500, mentioned that Rathcoole was garrisoned by the Irish forces.

From a deposition made subsequently by the portreeve, Richard Crofts, it appears that almost all the inhabitants joined the Irish. Chief amongst them were the family of Scurlock, then represented by Patrick Scurlock, who was M.P. for Newcastle, and his sons Thomas and Martin, and a family called Hetherington; and amongst the others were three persons, including the parish clerk, “who had turned since this rebellion,” Crofts says, “from the Protestant religion unto Mass, and were then likewise out in actual rebellion.” These statements were corroborated in other depositions made by Digory Cory, one of the churchwardens, and a widow called Honor Pooley.

Although the Irish force at Rathcoole, as mentioned under Saggart, was somewhat depleted in the following January, Sir Thomas Armstrong, on coming there at the end of the month, encountered in the village some 2,000 of the enemy, and was forced to retire with his troops on to the open highway on the Dublin side of the village.

There, however, the soldiers, “having liberty of ground,” charged the enemy, “slaying some of them, riding down others, and routing all.” The victory was considered only a moderate one, as Armstrong was not in a position to follow it up; but some fifty of the Irish were slain, including a Captain Lee, who was said to be a son-in-law of Lady Carbery.

Three months later, towards the end of the month of April, the residents of Rathcoole, headed by the Scurlocks and the Hetheringtons, attacked, about half a mile on the Dublin side of Rathcoole, some Englishmen, with their wives and families, who were being sent by the well-known James Touchet, Earl of Castlehaven, from his house, Maddenstown, in the County Kildare, to Dublin for protection. These Englishmen were supposed to be in charge of four waggons laden with wool, but the insurgents saw through the disguise.

The Earl of Castlehaven’s brother, Colonel Mervyn Touchet, who was in charge of the party, only escaped by the goodness of his horse, and the insurgents killed four of the party and wounded three others, before they were interrupted by a son of Sir Walter Dungan, who compelled them to bring the remainder of the party with the waggons to his father’s castle at Celbridge.

A few days later the Earl of Ormonde sent out a troop from Dublin to avenge the outrage, and at Rathcoole this troop was joined by some dragoons under the command of Sir Arthur Loftus, the Governor of Naas.

The inhabitants on their approach fled to a neighbouring hill, which was covered with furze, and the soldiers, having surrounded this hill, exacted terrible retribution for the murders which had been committed by setting the furze on fire, and by burning and killing all, men, women, and children, who had taken refuge upon the hill.

About this time Sir William Parsons, who knew the neighbourhood well, drew the attention of the Earl of Ormonde to the protection afforded to the rebels by the castle at Rathcreedan and a mill close to it. He mentions that the insurgents had issued out of them, seized cattle which were being brought from Naas to Dublin, and had killed three of the men in charge; and begs Ormonde to send some horse from Leixlip to burn and ruin those places, as “they were very offensive. ”

Subsequently a garrison was placed by the Government at Rathcoole, and in 1648 we find stationed there Captain Sir Thomas Wharton, Lieutenant Thomas Chambers, Ensign Gilbert Nicholson, seven non-commissioned officers, and fifty-three soldiers. Under their protection the village became a thriving one, and in the time of the Commonwealth it is stated to have contained many good habitable houses and cabins, as well as two old castles.

The Scurlock’s castle at Rathcreedan had been demolished, but there still remained at that place the mill and a chapel in good repair. On Calliaghstown there were no buildings.

About the time of the Restoration the inhabitants included thirty persons of English and 123 persons of Irish descent, and the town was still under the rule of a portreeve, James Willion then holding that position.

From the Hearth Money Return it appears that Rathcoole was then the most important of the surrounding villages. The principal resident in the parish was Mr. Matthew Barry, a cousin of the illustrious James Barry, 1st Baron of Santry, then Chief Justice of the King’s Bench. Mr. Barry was himself a Government official, and is said to have lived to the remarkable age of 105 years. His house was rated as containing three hearths.

Amongst the other houses we find one of five hearths inhabited by Thomas Robinson, one of four inhabited by John. Robinson, one of three inhabited by Moses Reyly, and seven houses of two inhabited respectively by the Rev. Edward Lovelace, Charles Eaton, Henry Murphy, James Reyly, David Lawler, William Lawless, and John Walsh, besides forty-one cottages of one hearth each.

Rathcreedan was then in possession of Richard Harvey and his son Simon, and Calliaghstown of Oliver FitzGerald, who had succeeded a foreigner known as Hermon Miller.

Until the ancestors of Sir John Kennedy settled near Rathcoole there was in the eighteenth century no residence of importance in the parish. During the first half of that century, when a grandson of Mr. Matthew Barry, Mr. Clement Barry, was the principal resident, the only references of interest to Rathcoole are in connection with its position on the southern high road.

At Rathcoole the eccentric John Dunton, when on his way in 1868 to sell his books at Kilkenny, mentions that he had refreshment-a bottle of cider-as he and his companions thought “a pot in their pates a mile on the way,” and speaks of ‘the place as a little town.

Thirty years later a famous traveller, John Loveday, passed through it, and observed that the road was then a very fine made way of considerable breadth, with only one turnpike between Dublin and Naas, at which to his surprise no more than a halfpenny a horse was charged. He speaks of the great poverty of the inhabitants, and mentions that wretched cabins made of mud and thatched with straw were to be found even in the immediate neighbourhood of the metropolis.

This continued to be the case all through that century, and in 1779 Philip Luckombe, when making his tour through Ireland, says that the village of Rathcoole was mostly composed of clay huts awkwardly built and irregularly disposed. Accommodation for travellers was, however, not neglected, and in 1789 there was a very good inn in the village kept by a Mr. Leedom.

About the middle of the eighteenth century a large house, now used as the rectory, was erected at Rathcoole for the accommodation of one of the schools founded by the Mercer family. Austin Cooper, who visited the village in the summer of 1780, speaks of it as a handsome house, and says there was on the gates the following inscription : - Mrs. Mercer’s Alms House for Poor Girls. 1744.”

At the same time Cooper visited Rathcreedan, where he found some remains of the Scurlocks’ Castle and of their mill, and also the place called the College, where he found remains of a large farm establishment, and was told that the name arose from its being part of the Archbishop of Dublin’s property. **

Ecclesiastical History**

The present church of Rathcoole, which was built about one hundred and seventy years ago, possesses no architectural features of interest. It occupies the site of a church (of the foundation of which nothing is known), which was assigned in. the thirteenth century to the Dean of St. Patrick’s Cathedral as portion of his corps, and became a chapel subservient to his church at Clondalkin.

Within the limits of the present parish there was then also another church, the site of which was discovered in 1837 by Mr. Eugene O’Curry, on the lands of Calliaglistown belonging to the Convent of St. Mary do Hogges.

At the commencement of the seventeenth century Rathcoole and Calliaghstown were accounted separate parishes. In Rathcoole the nave of the church was in good repair, although the chancel was in ruins.

In 1615 the Vicar was the Rev. Emanuel Ballock, already referred to under Saggart, who was stated to be a graduate and a reading minister; and in 1630 the Rev. John Hughes, who employed as his curate the Rev. Robert Jones, mentioned also under Saggart.

In Calliaghstown the church was ruinous, and had been so for thirty years. The tithes were impropriate in the hands of the executor of Sir Richard Greame, knight, and were farmed by him to Mr. FitzSimon of the Grange, who had swallowed up the vicarage. The Rev. Robert Jones had also charge of this parish, for which he received only twenty-five shillings a year, and all the parishioners were stated to be recusants.

Amongst the subsequent Vicars of Rathcoole we find in 1639 the Rev. Christopher Cardiffe, in 1645 the Rev. Henry Birch, in 1662 the Rev. Edward Lovelace, in 1674 the Rev. William Williamson, prebendary of Kilmactalway; in 1703 the Rev. Thomas Theaker, prebendary of Tasagart; in 1714 the Rev. Edward Drury, prebendary of Tasagart, in whose time the present church was built; in 1737 the Rev. Roger Ford, prebendary of Tasagart who had as his curate in 1737 the Rev. Coote Mitchell, and in 1752 the Rev. William Ford; in 1756 the Rev. George Philips, prebendary of Tasagart; in 1770 the Rev. William Blachford, prebendary of Tasagart; in 1771 the Rev. Joseph Elwood, in 1804 the Rev. and Hon. Richard Ponsonby, in 1806 the Rev. Theophilus Blakeley, in 1806 the Rev. Thomas Hayden, in 1856 the Rev. William Johnson Thornhill, prebendary of Tasagart; and in 1888 the Rev. William Francis L. Shea.

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