New Inn, County Tipperary

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New Inn
Loch Cheann
Location
centerMap highlighting New Inn
Statistics
Province: Munster
County: County Tipperary
Population ( )
 - Town:
 - Environs:
 
c.250 
c.1000
New Inn, before the N8 bypass was opened
New Inn, before the N8 bypass was opened

New Inn (Irish: Loch Cheann) is a village in County Tipperary, in Ireland. It is located midway between the market and tourist towns of Cahir and Cashel. Until October 2007 it was located on the N8, the main road linking the cities of Cork and Dublin. Now bypassed, the main road through the village is a section of the R639.

A small community, New Inn has three pubs, two schools, one shop, a convent and Church, and a GAA pitch, which is home to Rockwell Rovers GAA Club. To the south of the village is Outrath Co-op, which serves the large agricultural hinterland of the village. Rockwell College, a prestigious private secondary school run by the Holy Ghost Fathers, is situated 3 km (1.9 mi) from the centre of the village.

A local legend holds that the gaelic version of the name, Loch Cheann (which translates literally as 'the lake of heads'), pertains to a great battle fought in the area in antiquity, or during the early medieval period. According to this tale, the heads of the vanquished warriors were severed by the winners, and cast into a lake.

Contents

[edit] History

[edit] The Whiteboys and eighteenth-century agrarian unrest

The area around New Inn was a hotbed of Whiteboy activity in the later 1700s.

[edit] New Inn, 1940

In November 1940 a local woman, Moll MacArthy, was murdered in field at Marlhill. An unmarried mother of seven, MacArthy was shot in the face at close range. Her neighbour, a man named Harry Gleeson, was arrested, charged, and convicted of her murder. He was hanged in Dublin. The Murder of Marlhill, as the event has become known, continues to spark controversy in the local community, with many maintaining Gleeson's innocence. A book and two RTE television programmes have documented the event.

[edit] Knockgraffon

The Motte at Knockgraffon
The Motte at Knockgraffon

The parish of New Inn also includes Knockgraffon, home to a ruined medieval church and graveyard, as well as the remains of a Motte, which is thought to date from the 1200s. Knockgraffon was also the centre of the O'Sullivan clan's ancestral lands, until that family was displaced by the Normans in the early thirteenth century. In 1998, the Knockgraffon Motte was purchased by an O'Sullivan (Gary Brian Sullivan of Statesboro, Georgia, USA) from its Norman-Irish owner (Donal Keating of Cahir, Ireland). It is the first time that Knockgraffon has been back in O'Sullivan possession for nearly 800 years. Other townlands include: Ardneasa, Boytonrath, Chamberlainstown, Derryclooney, Garrandea, Garranlea, Lagganstown, Lough Kent, Masterstown, Marlhill, Outrath.

Around 1610, the Irish historian Geoffrey Keating was appointed Parish Priest of Knockgraffon.

[edit] People

Marlhill outside New Inn is also the birthplace of Lena Rice, the last Irish woman to win Wimbledon singles title in tennis.[citation needed]

[edit] See also