MOYLE ABBEY GRAVEYARD – NOTES

Moyle Abbey is a townland in the civil parish of Narraghmore in the Barony of Narragh and Reban East in the Electoral Division of Ballitore and is on Sheet 36 of the Ordnance Survey 6” maps.

 

Civil Survey 1654-56 Moyle Abby & Sprostowne in the possession of Christopher Archbold of Timolin Irish Papist

 

Moyleaby on Pettys Map of Kildare in 1683

Mile Abby on the Noble and Keenan Map of Kildare of 1752

Mile Abby on Taylor’s Map of 1783 – graveyard may be indicated by a circle.

 

1837 Ordnance Survey Map clearly indicates the site  – burying ground – by a semi-circle

 

Griffith’s Valuation of 1850’s clearly shows the graveyard to be in the possession of Robert Archbold on whose land the R.C. Chapel is also situated. On the OS map the Chapel seems to be on the other side of the road .

 

According to the poet John Whelan [folklore collected by the late Willie Kelly of Incahquire] ‘Mile abbey’ had only 11 acres of land in it but according to Griffith’s there were 197 acres 3 roods and 37 perches. Whelan also says it had a corn mill called Blacktartry Mills but this is not borne out by Hogg’s Mills of Ireland. Mill mentioned in Civil Survey and on Noble and Keenan and Taylor Maps is apparently in the townland of Inchaquire.

Whelan’s claim that the ‘abbey’ may have been a Dominican one may be influenced by the Dominican Abbey in Athy. Since nothing of the abbey survives it is difficult to guess. The Knights Hospitallers were in Killelan and the Franciscans in Moone (originally a Columban site) and Castledermot. I have found no mention of Moyle Abbey in sources relating to the dissolution of the monasteries or in the Registers of Archbishop Alen.

 

Lord Walter Fitzgerald in the Journal of the Association for the Preservation of the Memorials of the Dead in 1900 states no trace remained of an abbey at that time. He lists 3 headstones/lettered stones  –

Hugh Doyle,died 1820;

Elizabeth Keough died 1855

Judith Whelan died 1858

– these may be within the church yard