| New Inn Loch Cheann |
||
| Location | ||
|
||
| Statistics | ||
| Province: | Munster | |
|---|---|---|
| County: | County Tipperary | |
|
Population (est.) |
150 500 |
|
New Inn (Irish: Loch Cheann) is a village in County Tipperary, Ireland. It is located in the Golden Vale midway between the market and tourist towns of Cahir and Cashel. Bypassed in October 2007 by the M8, the main road through the village is a section of the R639. Two other roads, the R687 to Clonmel and the L3121 road to Golden, begin at the centre of the village.
A small community, New Inn has three pubs, two schools, one shop, a convent and Church, a Community Centre 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 |
History
The Whiteboys and 18th-century agrarian unrest
The area around present-day New Inn was a hotbed of Whiteboy activity in the later 1700s.
The road through New Inn
It is not known when the present settlement of New Inn was founded. It is not listed on either Herman Moll's 1714 map of Ireland, nor is it depicted in Taylor and Skinner's Maps of the Roads of Ireland, published in 1778. While New Inn does not appear to have existed in the eighteenth century, the road now known as the R639 between Cashel and Cahir clearly did.[1][2] At that time the R639 was not the main Dublin to Cork route (it did not exist north of Cashel until 1739, nor south of Cahir to Fermoy until after 1811).[3] It is probable that the present settlement developed after the turnpike road-building drive of the 1700s was substantially complete by the early 1800s, when Charles Bianconi ran regular coach services throughout the region from 1815, establishing several inns along popular routes in the process.
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, and hanged in Dublin. The Murder of Marlhill, as the event has become known, continues to spark controversy both in the local community and historiographical circles, with many maintaining Gleeson's innocence. A book and two RTE television programmes have documented the event.[4]
Knockgraffon
The parish of New Inn also includes Knockgraffon (Cnoc Rafann), a completely rural locality which is home to a ruined medieval church and graveyard. Knockgraffon was once a village in its own right, but the settlement was abandoned some time in the eigteenth century. Around 1610, the Irish historian Geoffrey Keating was appointed Parish Priest of Knockgraffon. Notably, Knockgraffon is home to the remains of a motte which dates from the late 1100s. 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.
People
Marlhill outside New Inn is also the birthplace of Lena Rice, the only Irish woman to win Wimbledon singles title in tennis.[5]
References
- ^ Taylor and Skinner's Maps of the Roads of Ireland (Dublin, 1778)
- ^ http://www.swaen.com/zoom_map_large.htm?zoomifyImagePath=/os/zoom/02976/&zoomifyFadeInSpeed=10
- ^ J.H Andrews, Shapes of Ireland : Maps and Their Makers, 1564-1839 (Dublin, 1997), p. 269.
- ^ http://www.geographypublications.com/index.php?module=pagemaster&PAGE_user_op=view_page&PAGE_id=36
- ^ Eileen Bell, "Lena Rice of New Inn", Tipperary Historical Journal (1988), pp. 13-14.
See also
This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)
