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LARACOR AND RATHCAIRN |
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A couple of miles south of Trim is LARACOR , the place where
Jonathan Swift lived during his association with Esther "Stella" Johnson
and where he was rector (with very little rectitude) from 1699 to 1714.
No trace of his time here survives, however. Two miles further is Dangan
Castle , the family home of the Duke of Wellington, now no more than a
shell and again with little trace of its past. Ambrosio O'Higgins,
father of Bernardo O'Higgins, liberator of Chile, was born here.
Perhaps of more interest as an excursion is the Irish-speaking community
of RATHCAIRN , near Athboy, eight miles northwest of Trim, where
traditional Irish entertainment may well be taking place. The community
was uprooted from Connemara by the Land Commission between 1935 and 1940
and replanted here in Meath as a Gaeltacht . The population is about
three hundred and fifty and increasing, a unique statistic as most other
Irish-speaking communities are rapidly decreasing in numbers. Not far
away, in a field beside the Athboy-Navan road, is the Rathmore Church
and Cross ( An Ráth Mhór Teampall agus Cros ). The church, built by the
Plunkett family in the fifteenth century, is a fine example of the
flowering of an Anglo-Norman culture sympathetic to the native Irish
which the Tudor conquest succeeded in eradicating, and is full of
interesting stone carvings which are worth leaving the road to take a
look at. There's an octagonal shaft from a baptismal font, a violated
Norman sarcophagus in the fortified tower, a decorated altar stone, the
stalk of an ancient cross and other stonework. Note the corbelled roof
in the other tower, now trapped as a pigeon-cote.
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