Talk:Ardbraccan
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Jtdirl: Great to see you back. You clearly know a lot about Meath so I have a question on Ardbraccan. Was the old bishop's palace where the Navan water works at Liscarton is now? There is a very old church/building in there now. I was told by a local man that it was there that the Bishop of Meath lived. Is this true? What is that place? If so, when did he live there? And was it from that place that Hugh Brady would have signed as "Ardbraccan" in the 16th century? If so it occured to me that the entire village moved, a fact which would be very interesting. Would this be true? (I know other Irish villages such as Ballynacargy in Westmeath moved a couple of kilometres to be near the newly-built canals in the 18th century and if these shifting villages were common they are not really covered by modern historians).
I'll post a note on your homepage just in case you miss this. And I may be pushing it- so ignore me if I am- but when and why did the Bishop of Meath move the ecclesiastical headquarters from Trim to Navan? Somebody wrote http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diocese_of_Meath that it moved from Navan to Mullingar because the bishop fell out with Parnell. The specifics weren't mentioned so you might know.
But most of all I'm curious as to when and why the diocesan headquarters left Trim for Navan. Thanks in advance.
Damn, I really must learn how to edit this simple discussion properly!
your homepage just in case you miss this.
No. Ardbraccan (meaning the height/hill of Braccan) was always about a mile away on a hill (obviously!) where the church and graveyard is. (When you are next in Liscarton, turn left on the Kells Road at the gates to the old castle, then take the next right at Newgate (the big garage and shop called 'Newgate Stores' — you can drop in and say hello to the owner, Martha!) and go on straight after half a mile or so you'll see a big set of gates. That is one of the entrances. If you continue following the road around you'll come to a crossroads. Take a left and go along a narrowish road (you'll pass another set of gates into the house) you'll go down a steep hill (Before that on your left you'll see a row of houses down a lane. That is all that remains of Ardbraccan village, once a major urban settlement. If you ignore it and on down the hill the next turn on your left will bring you down a laneway to Ardbraccan Church and graveyard. (There's yet another set of gates to the house and the estate at the end of the lane!)
I don't think the bishops lived in Liscarton Castle, though it is possible. They were by the middle ages exceedingly rich, so it is quite possible that they owned that property too. In the mid eighteenth century they replaced the tudor manor house with the current Ardbraccan House so it is possible they lived in the Castle at Liscarton for a while.
Actually Liscarton was lived in until the early 20th century. There are pictures of a small (I think thatched) wing to the old long derelict main building in existence. But I think people ceased to live in it in the early years of the 20th century.
I only know of two places in the area where bishops lived: in Ardbraccan House (and the preceding Tudor manor house) from around 885 until 1885 (Ardbraccan at one stage was a separate diocese until all the small dioceses in Meath were merged together in the Great Synod of Kells in 1152) and Bishopscourt, a small georgian/victorian house nearby where the bishop lived until I think 1958. (It is now the Holy Ghost Father's house, An tobar.)
As to the Bishop and Parnell, it is possible. Parnell did have a big link with Navan (he addressed meetings in Market Square. I once met a woman who attended one of those meetings). The Bishop moved in I think 1907. It proved disastrous. The gobshites made a complete f---up and lost all the diocesian records in the house. (How can you lose an entire archive???) I remember hearing somewhere that there may have been some link to the Bishop's attack on Parnell, but then that might have been a rumour, and the move to Mullingar might have been totally unconnected with it. I hope that helps. FearÉIREANN
\(caint) 04:35, 11 November 2005 (UTC)
