School: Athea (B.) (roll number 15685)
- Location:
- Athea, Co. Limerick
- Teacher: Patrick McCarthy
Archival Reference
The Schools’ Collection, Volume 0485, Page 244
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: Athea (B.)
- XML Page 244
- XML “Local Ruins”
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
- About two miles from the village of Athea is the churchyard of Temple Athea. In the centre of this are still to be seen the ruins of an old monastery. The walls of this monastery were of stone but it is thought that the roof was composed of thatch.According to legend Cromwell's soldiers arrived in Athea one Sabbath morning. They forded the river somewhere about Glenagore and then advanced towards Temple Athea. On the way the slaughtered every living thing they met and burned every dwelling. When they arrived at the monastery they found it filled with people who were either hearing mass or who had sought shelter from the soldiers. The story tells us that the doors and windows were secured and the building put on fire so that all who were in it perished.
