School: Castlecary
- Location:
- Ballyrattan, Co. Donegal
- Teacher: Mary S.J. Donaghy
Archival Reference
The Schools’ Collection, Volume 1117, Page 61
Image and data © National Folklore Collection, UCD.
See copyright details.
DownloadOpen data
Available under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
- XML School: Castlecary
- XML Page 61
- XML “Local Monuments”
Note: We will soon deprecate our XML Application Programming Interface and a new, comprehensive JSON API will be made available. Keep an eye on our website for further details.
On this page
- There are not very many local monuments in this locality, but there is one at Cooley about a quarter of a mile from the village of Moville, a pretty watering place in Co. Donegal. It is a large stone in the shape of a cross placed outside the entrance gate of the old graveyard. The cross is about ten feet high. It is without a carving with a pierced ring and hole four inches in diameter. The base of the Cooley cross is a large flat stone with a hole four inches in diameter in one end.
At Cooley there are the remains of an ancient monastery. It was supposed to be built by St. Columba in the sixth century.
St Finian is said to have been buried in this old graveyard at Cooley. In the graveyard there is a small rectangular building covered with a stone roof. The building is about 8 1/2 ft long and 6 1/2 feet wide. It is called the skull house.
Cooley was once famous for making poteen (illicit whiskey) and this poteen was sold at a great whiskey fair which was held weekly in Moville and was inported to some of the neighbouring counties, and it is said to(continues on next page)
- Collector
- Arthur Peoples
- Gender
- Male
- Address
- Castlecary, Co. Donegal
