Site breadcrumb trail...
Boyounagh Burial Ground Digital Mapping
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The parish of Glenamaddy gets its ecclesiastical name from the monastic foundation at Boyounagh, part of the ruins of which dominate the sky-line on the Dunmore road about three miles west of Glenamaddy, on the Cashel Cross to Williamstown road.
According to tradition, this monastic foundation dates from the 6th Century, a much more extensive foundation than the remaining ruins we can see there today. Patrick Knight wrote in ‘A Short History of the Parish of Glenamaddy with some account of neighbouring parishes’, that Boyounagh probably got its name from Yellow Marsh which is near the pre-reformation church and graveyard.
One recognised landlord of Boyounagh and surrounding areas was a McDonnell of Dunmore, whose magnificent stone tomb can be seen beside the ruins of the ancient church at Boyounagh. Martin McDonnell a merchant of Dunmore purchased the Boyounagh Estate, including 3 acres of church for £5,850 in 1859
The first written reference we have to the Church of Boyounagh is from the Annuals of the Four Masters in 1137 when the church was burnt down.
There is no further records of a church in the parish until the building of a small church in 1820 in the Old Cemetery in Church Street by a Fr Browne. The church survived until the building of our present magnificent church by Fr Walter Conway in 1904-1905.
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