The Parish of Mulhuddart

The townlands comprised in the parish of Mulhuddart in the seventeenth century are stated to have been Belgree, Buzzardstown, Castlecurragh, Cruiserath, Damastown, Goddamendy, Hollywoodrath, Huntstown, Killamonan, Kilmartin, Macetown, Paslickstown, Powerstown, The Pass, Tyrrellstown, and Whitestown.

The townlands comprised in the parish now are Bay, Belgree, Buzzardstown, Court, Damastown, Gallanstown, Goddamendy Hollystown, Hollywood, Hollywoodrath, Huntstown, Killamonan (i.e., the church of the little bog), Kilmartin (i.e., Martin’s church), Littlepace, Macetown (i.e., the town of the hill), North, South and Middle, Mooretown, Paslickstown, Powerstown, Tyrrellstown, Yellow Walls. Many of these names are derived from those of former occupants of the lands, viz., the families of Bossard, Gallan, Hunt, Power, and Tyrrell.

The chief object of archaeological interest is the ruined church. **

Mulhuddart, with notices of Tyrellellstown, Hollywoodrath, and adjacent places.**

The parish of Mulhuddart lies to the north of the parish of Castleknock, on the Meath border of Dublin county. Its lands, which are within the district covered by the Ward Union Hunt, are crossed on the south by the road to Trim, and on the north by the road to Ratoath, and much traffic between Dublin and the county of Meath passes through them.

The occurrence of the word “rath “in two of the place-names shows that the lands had an early history, and that the Anglo-Norman invaders found on them the sites of Celtic dwellings, of which, as in the case of Castleknock, they made. use. Under their settlement the lands formed part of two manors, Belgree and Castleknock. The manor of Belgree, which was a possession of the Priory of Lismullen, and contained lands within the county of Meath, embraced the more northern part of Mulhuddart parish.

The lands of Hollywoodrath had probably been originally part of that manor, but these lands appear to have been demised at an early period to the family of Holywood, who have left their name impressed on them. At the beginning of the fifteenth century a custodian of Belgree was vested in Sir Christopher Plunkett, from which he sought to be relieved; and subsequently it is mentioned that the priory had received a rent in respect of the Holywoodrath lands by the hands of Robert Holywood. Later on in that century the priory obtained a reduction in the valuation of their Mulhuddart lands on the ground that they were barren and of little value.

In the part of Mulhuddart parish belonging to the manor of Castleknock no less than four of the townland names are derived from their occupants in mediaeval times, namely, Cruiserath, Buzzardstown, Huntstown, and Tyrrellstown. The owners of Cruiserath, which is now a townland in Finglas parish, were in the middle ages very prominent, and they succeeded Henry Tyrrell in the office of chief serjeant of Dublin county. They were enfeoffed in the person of Richard Cruise by one of the barons of Castleknock in the thirteenth century; and in a suit concerning a messuage and a carucate of land “in the Rath near Mulhuddart,” Robert Cruise and his wife Matilda appear as plaintiffs in the first half of the fourteenth century. Their opponent was one William Bossard, and in his surname the townland name Buzzardstown no doubt originated.

Similarly, Huntstown is derived from the occupation of the lands by a family called Hunt, whose last representative Nicholas Hunt was outlawed for treason towards the close of the fourteenth century; and Tyrrellstown is derived from the occupation of the lands by cadets of the Tyrrell family, one of whom, Sir Walter Tyrrell of Dublin, was granted the property forfeited by Nicholas Hunt. At that time Powerstown was the chief seat of the Tyrrell family, and it was then occupied by John Tyrrell, who was a member of the great council, and one of the chief judges.

From two rentals of the part of Castleknock manor in which the Mulhuddart lands lay, it appears that Cruiserath was held in 1408 by William Cruise, and in 1558 by Bartholomew Blanchfield; that the Pass was held in 1408 by Christopher Plunkett, and in 1558 by Lord Dunsany; that Powerstown was held in 1408 by Gerald Tyrrell, and in 1558 by Richard Tyrrell, and that Kilmartin was held in 1408 by Henry Scurlagh and his wife Isabella, and in 1558 by Nicholas Scurlagh.

In the second half of the fourteenth century John Dowdall, who shared the same fate as Nicholas Hunt, was in possession of Paslickstown and Macetown, and in the early part of the sixteenth century Thomasine Talbot is mentioned as the occupant of them. At the latter time St. Mary’s Abbey appears in possession of part of Huntstown, and during the second half of that century James Goodman, of Loughlinstown, and Patrick FitzGerot were successively in occupation of Damastown.

As his wife directed in her will, made in 1475, that her body should be interred in Mulhuddart church, it is probable that at that time William Fleming was also in occupation of lands in the parish. His wife was a daughter of Peter FitzRery, whose family was seated at Coolatrath in Kilsallaghan parish, and she possessed in common with her husband iron, salt, and hides, as well as corn and cattle.

At the close of the sixteenth century the Tyrrells of Powerstown, who are included amongst the men of name in Dublin county, were the chief residents in Mulhuddart parish, but in the early part of the seventeenth century their place was taken by the family of Bellings.

Of this family the best-known member is the author of the “History of the Irish Confederation,” edited in recent years by the late Sir John Gilbert, and published with numerous illustrative documents in seven quarto volumes.

The author’s grandfather, Richard Bellings, who was a distinguished lawyer, and from 1574 to 1584 solicitor-general for Ireland, was possessed at the time of his death, in 1600, by grant from the Crown of the lands of Tyrrellstown, Buzzardstown, Paslickstown, and Macetown, together with a mill and watercourse, and subsequently the author’s father, Sir Henry Bellings, was seated on the lands of Tyrrellstown, on which a large house was built. Sir Henry Bellings, who held the office of provost-marshal, incurred during his career much unpopularity. In the proceedings against the O’Byrnes he was one of Lord Falkland’s chief instruments, and while serving as high sheriff of Wicklow county he was heavily fined for irregularities. In the counsels of the Confederation Richard Bellings, the author of its History, was regarded by many with suspicion, and looked upon as a creature of the Duke of Ormonde, whose borough of Callan he had previously represented.

His connexion with the Confederation was due to the influence of the president of the supreme council, Viscount Mountgarret, whose daughter he had married. She had died some years before, in the summer of 1635, and the record of her death states that her body was brought “with funeral proceedings and rites” from her husband’s house on Merchants’ Quay to St. Michan’s Church in Dublin, and thence “to the church of Mulhuddart in the county of Dublin to her grave.”

During the period of fire and sword, between 1641 and 1649, the parish of Mulhuddart was overrun by the contending armies and laid waste. A year and a half after the rebellion, in April, 1643, a party of horse sent out from Dublin by Ormonde had a skirmish there with some of the Irish forces, and in the following July the Earl of Cavan was encamped there with a large number of troops for several days. He was in great need of equipment and provisions, and addressed more than one urgent appeal for them to Ormonde from Mulhuddart church, in which he appears to have taken up his quarters.

Four years later, in the autumn of 1647, Owen Roe O’Neill passed through the parish on his devastating march, and in the following year Mulhuddart was garrisoned with seventy-two men and seven non-commissioned officers under the command of Sir Francis Willoughby, with John Bradshaw as lieutenant and Thomas Barnes as ensign.

The Commonwealth surveys show that no building of importance escaped destruction. Of the Bellings’ house only the walls remained, and of one that had stood on the lands of Damastown and of the church a similar record bad to be made. On Powerstown, which had belonged to William Freeme, Paslickstown, Buzzardstown, and Cruiserath houses are mentioned, but they were small and roofed with thatch.

At the time of the Restoration the inhabitants of full age in the parish numbered twenty-nine persons of English and a hundred and forty-nine persons of Irish descent. Amongst these only four were persons of rank, namely - Thomas Luttrell, the owner of Luttrellstown, who was in occupation of Powerstown; John Jordan, who was in occupation of Tyrrellstown; Nicholas Carte, who was in occupation of Damastown; and Gilbert Ferris, who was in occupation of Paslickstown; and with the exception of Powerstown and Damastown no house in the parish was assessed for more than two hearths.

After the Restoration, Powerstown, which was assessed in 1664 for six chimneys, appears as the residence of Sir St. John Brodrick, the father of the first Viscount Midleton. He had come to Ireland after the rebellion as an officer in the army, and had obtained under the Commonwealth as a kinsman of Fleetwood large grants of land in the county of Cork. Owing to his services to the royal cause at the time of the Restoration he was confirmed by Charles the Second in his property, and was given also the office of provost-marshal in Munster. As a prominent Whig he was the subject of Tory calumny, but he appears from a “Vindication of himself from the aspersions cast on him” to have been a man of ability and of more temperate character than some of his calumniators. His residence in Powerstown was not of long duration, and before 1667, when the house was assessed for eleven chimneys, a new owner had come into possession.

The new owner of Powerstown was the Right Hon. Sir John Povey, then a baron of the exchequer, and subsequently chief justice of the king’s bench, from whom the Smythes of Gaybrook trace descent. Povey, who was a kinsman of Thomas Povey, the friend of Pepys and Evelyn, was a native of Shropshire, and had been a student at Oxford and in Gray’s Inn when he was called in 1645 to the bar. After practising for a time in England he came to Ireland and obtained a seat in the Restoration parliament as one of the members for the borough of Swords. Soon afterwards, in the autumn of 1663, he was raised to the bench as a baron of the exchequer, and ten years later was promoted to the chief justiceship. But the latter office he did not long enjoy, as his health broke down, and after a considerable sojourn abroad his death toqk place in February, 1679, at Bordeaux.

Of Damastown, which was assessed for five chimneys, William Hudson appears in 1664 as the occupant, but before 1667 William Proby, the father of Swift’s friend, the eminent Dublin surgeon, and of the vicar of Castleknock, was in possession. Proby had come to Dublin as a teacher of youth, an avocation in which he received encouragement from the corporation, as the city was then in great need of a master “in the arts of writing and arithmetic,” and after the Restoration he had become the Archbishop of Dublin’s registrar.

Sir Henry Bellings had died before the establishment of the Commonwealth, and had been succeeded by his son Richard, who had joined the king’s friends in Ireland, and was one of the last to leave this country. During. the Commonwealth he remained abroad, where he was prominent in royalist circles; and after the Restoration he returned to Ireland. He appears to have resided in Dublin, whence after his death in September, 1677, his body was carried to Mulhuddart to be interred near his wife. His tomb, which was enclosed by a wall, was well known fifty years later, but no inscription was visible upon it.

His eldest son, Sir Richard Bellings, who was secretary to the queen of Charles the Second, was then residing in England; but his second son, Henry Bellings, was residing at the Bay in Mulhuddart parish. In the April following his father’s death he contemplated, however, “a voyage to England,” and made his will in consideration “of the mutability of life, and of the accidents that might happen.”

After the death of William Proby, which occurred in or about 1687, his eldest son the Rev. Charles Proby succeeded to Damastown, and was appointed, as has been already mentioned, vicar of Castleknock, and also vicar of Loughcrew, in the county of Meath. He married a niece of Archbishop Narcissus Marsh, who held then the see of Dublin; and as the archbishop had an inveterate dislike to matrimony, the course of his love did not run smoothly. “This evening betwixt eight and nine of the clock at night,” writes the archbishop on September 10, 1665, “my niece Grace Marsh not having the fear of God before her eyes, stole out of my house at St. Sepulchre’s, and, as is reported, was married that night to Charles Proby, vicar of Castleknock, in a tavern. Lord! consider my affliction.” As a consequence Proby had to resign the vicarage, and was reduced to the position of curate to his successor, with whom his relations were far from amicable.

In connexion with their disputes a letter to Archbishop King, with which Proby questions Whittingham’s “charter to abuse all mankind,” shows Proby in the light of a somewhat eccentric person. But he was forgiven by Archbishop Marsh. who left his wife a legacy, and on his death in January, 1727, was the subject of an elegy, in which his charity and piety are applauded

Triumphant nine, prepare your cymbals, raise,

With mournful harmony rehearse the praise

Of the most pious, just, and best of men,

Who is gone, dire fate, ne’er to return again.’

Amongst the residents in the eighteenth century the owners of Buzzardstown are prominent. In the first half of the century the family of Royne, and in the second half the family of Flood, were in possession.

On a winter’s night in 1761 it is recorded that “the gable-end of Mr. Flood’s house at Mulhuddart suddenly gave way, whereby Mrs. Flood and her daughter were killed” ; but the family was not extinguished, and members of it appear subsequently as residents.

(In the old church of Castleknock on a tombstone under the Communion Table there was the following inscription: -“Here lie the bodies of William Proby, of Damastown, Esq., of Elizabeth his wife, of Ann and Atalanta, his daughters, of Elizabeth and Sarah, daughters of his second son Thomas, of Ann wife of his third son William, of Robert Nichols, son of Elinor daughter of Thomas his second son, of Elinor daughter of Elinor aforesaid, of William eldest son of Charles eldest son of William aforesaid… **

Ecclesiastical History.**

The church of Mulhuddart is now represented by the remains of a tower, and some fragments of the walls. Towards the close of the eighteenth century Austin Cooper found the ruins not much more extensive. He says that the tower, which was vaulted on the ground-floor, was very much broken, and that the staircase, which was in the south-west corner, was no longer intact. At that time a well, which lies to the south of the church, was much frequented on the feast of the Nativity of the Virgin, which was called locally Lady Day.

A few years before Austin Cooper’s visit it had been covered with a building by a Dublin convent, and inscriptions and emblems which still remain had been placed on the walls of the chamber.’

Of the early history of Mulhuddart church nothing is known. As mentioned in the ecclesiastical history of Castleknock, the prebend which bears its name in the Cathedral of St. Patrick was founded as a second prebend of Castleknock, and it is not until a century later that the name Mulhuddart is mentioned in connexion with it.

The church comes into notice first in the early part of the fifteenth century on the incorporation of a guild which was described as “the guild and fraternity of our Lady of St. Mary of the church of Mulhuddart.” Of this guild the chief promoters were Sir Nicholas Barnewall, the husband of Ismay Serjeant, and one Peter Clinton, and the names of such of its officers as have come down to the present day show that its members were not confined to residents in Mulhuddart parish.

Between 1445 and 1472 the names of the officers, a master and two wardens, are twice recorded. On the first occasion the master was Richard Porter, and the wardens John Tyrrell and Robert de la Felde, and on the second occasion the master was John Tyrrell, and the wardens Richard Tyrrell and Pierce FitzRery.

Before the year 1472, the guild, which was religious in its object and was open to women as well as to men, had acquired considerable property, including the lands that had belonged to the leper house of St. Lawrence near Palmerston and a tenement in Newcastle Lyons, and to enable it to hold real estate an extension of its charter was granted by parliament. In 1522 a confirmation of its property was granted by Henry the Eighth, the wardens then being John Barnewall, Lord Trimleston, Walter FitzRery, and Richard Tyrrell.

As appears from an inquisition taken at the time of the dissolution of St. Patrick’s Cathedral in the sixteenth century, the prebend of Mulhuddart had assigned to it in Mulhuddart parish the tithes from the townlands of Belgree, Buzzardstown, Kilmartin, Paslickstown, and Tyrrellstown, and the prebend of Castleknock had assigned to it the tithes from the hamlets of Bay, Belgree, Goddamendy, Hollywoodrath, Huntstown, and Mooretown, as well as the small tithes from Damastown, Kilmartin, Macetown, and Powerstown.

In regard to the parish. the prebendary of Mulhuddart had no responsibility beyond keeping the chancel of the church in repair, and the provision of a curate rested with the vicar of Castleknock, to whose stipend a contribution of twenty-six shillings and eightpence a year was made by the prebendary.

The church was returned in 1615 as being in good repair, and although Archbishop Bulkeley states in 1680 that both the chancel and nave were in ruins, the church remained probably partly roofed until the close of the seventeenth century. In 1643, as has been mentioned, Lord Cavan found shelter in it, and after the Battle of the Boyne, in 1690, eight soldiers were murdered while seeking shelter in it.

In the last decade of that century the Protestant families numbered two, those of Mr. Proby and Mr. Whitshed, who was an uncle of the chief justice of that name.

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