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How can you possibly say they 'backed the wrong horse', the Irish Nationalist Catholic cause is at all times the 'right horse' irrespective of the outcome! I don't know about 'secret masses' but certainly sometimes the new Protestant families helped the Catholic ones. For example the vestments...

No Fleming, like Nugent, is a great Norman name of the general Meath area. All these families were very determined and committed Catholics but as the Penal Laws wore on, some changed to preserve their wealth and these Protestant families are the ones many people know from the 19th century. But...

This is the 1744 account by the traveler Isaac Butler on his visit to Fore:

Thats the saints name, St Fechin, although you would really not pronounce the c.

To give you some idea of the erudition of Patrick Lynch, to whom we owe that Anchorite list, one of the great of the poor scholars of Ireland, here is a list of his works: Paddy's Portable Chronoscope Carrick-on-Suir, 1792. The Pentaglot Preceptor; Or Elementary Institutes Of The English...

Yes thats true, there was a Famine around that time. You know an interesting thing about the earlier Irish Famines is that when we had a native parliament, albeit a very controlled one, before the Act of Union, they always banned the export of food out of Ireland at those times. You can read...

Yes but probably, well definitely, there were earlier ones. This is where that list comes from and I don't know any other source for this information. I presume with these references Lynch might have visited Fore, or corresponded with somebody from there:

But remember that part had also been rebuilt by the Earl of Westmeath c.1680, so some of it was there then. Well the list of Anchorites that you see above for c.1600 to 1741 was from Patrick Lynch's book on St Patrick of about 1830, via Fr John Brady's notes on Meath history, where I got the...

Yes very interesting Myles. Basically Christian spirituality is to be laughed at in Ireland but any Pagan roots you can find are to be glorified. Its the transition the Occult world want to make here! Yes O'Donovan was there c.1840 but more interestingly another traveller, I think it was Isaac...

Yes, the "Holy man in the stone" is one of the miracles, and thats the Anchorite. I think with the Ordnance survey you are probably thinking of John O'Donavan, it was his job to check the Irish placenames and make sure they made sense as renditions of the Irish. His letters, from all over...

No Fr Beglin wasn't, but its a kind of truism to say that Shakespeare does have some strange insights into Irish society that are unexpected and a bit hidden, like his Catholicism as well.

Yes its a Norman name of course, they were close relatives of Hugh de Lacy. So again Fr Patrick Beglin was the priest here in Shakespeare's time, I don't know was he a friar as well but anyway I wonder does Shakespeare capture the atmosphere here a bit: Eglamoure: "The Sun begins to guild the...

And remember you have also the crozier of St Fechin, i.e. an ornamental covering for the remains of the wooden crozier used by St Fechin. Actually I went into the National Museum a short while ago to see it, where it used to be on display, but its gone now, presumably in storage.

Yes there are many ancient lives of St Fechin, mostly in Latin but some in Irish, dating to about the 700s or 800s, so they could be mined for solid references to building work if anybody wanted to go down that road.

No, thats Robert Nugent. His family are also one of the few Nugent families still in Westmeath or near there. I know him alright but am not related to him, except that he is another Nugent of course and members of the clan tend to stick together!lol I am Brian Nugent, from rural Meath but not...

Declan Do we have build dates for the 4 different constructions. And are these bones human bones? Yes I assume they are human bones, underneath the floor are the graves of previous anchorites, and under the chequered part graves of the Earls and Marquisses of Westmeath. As regards build dates...

This is a video on the Anchorite's Cell at Fore Abbey Co. Westmeath. An Anchorite took a special vow, to remain for the rest of his life enclosed in these small cells, awaiting his death. Fr Patrick Beglin was easily the most famous of the Anchorites of Fore, and incidentally he is said to...