The Graveyard

The Old Church and Graveyard, Kilteevogue

Although the Protestant religion held control of the church, the Catholic population claimed and asserted an exclusive right of burial in the adjoining graveyard. As no Protestant cemetery was in existence anywhere nearer than Stranorlar, it was inevitable that this right should one day be contested. A member of the Chambers family of Chamberstown passed away in 1695 and his body was interred in the Catholic graveyard.

Two distinguished officers who had served in the army of King James II from 1685-1690 then resided in Glenfin. John O' Scanlan was a lieutenant and his brother Manus Dubh was a major. The latter was a strenuous patriot. Having left home to make some purchases at a fair in Connaught, he was absent when the Chambers funeral had taken place and only heard of the occurrence on his return to his home in Drimderrydoonan. Instantly he saddled his horse, summoned the farmers whom he observed moulding their potato crops in the fields, along the route to the graveyard, distributed a gallon of whiskey among his hastily collected followers and then explained to them that he came to eject the last coffin that had been consigned to earth among the bones of their Catholic forebears. Quickly the grave was opened, a rope was tied around the coffin and Manus Dubh, having looped the other end of the rope to a knot on his horse's tail, rode right into the middle of the Finn River and there he detached the coffin to be borne downstream by the flood. The coffin was later rescued at Glenmore and reinterred in Stranorlar.

An inscription on an old tombstone in Glenfin graveyard that Lieutenant John O' Scanlan died on 11th May 1709 and Major Manus Dubh O' Scanlan died on 16th July 1717.

There is no record to suggest that the Protestant population either attempted or meditated any reprisal for this deed and no further controversies about the graveyard are reported until the year 1876. At this time the director was the Rev. Mr. Jones, who was by no means unpopular, closed the cemetery gates to all Catholic funerals and with the approval of the landlord and local magistrate Sir Thomas Styles put up a notice threatening prosecution if anybody attempted to enter. It happened that the then parish priest in Glenfin Fr. Michael Friel had brought his father from Mevagh to live with him and that the old man died about the time the warning to the trespassers was posted up. When the funeral cortege arrived at the cemetery, they found it locked and garnished with the precious notice. A second funeral arrived almost immediately and a few of the mourners relieved the anxious and suspenseful situation by raising the gate out of it's sockets and flinging it indignantly out of the way. Both the minister and Sir Thomas Styles at once expressed their regret to Fr. Friel and offered as an explanation that the gates were only locked to stop men attending funerals allowing their horses to dirty and disfigure the precincts of the church.

Old Fr. Friel was not resentful for in the stormy days of the Land League in the late 1880's he spent a lot of energy and incurred widespread public criticism for his efforts to secure Rack Rents for Styles. That he befriended him in other ways too was commonly believed but never proved.

On behalf of the Style family, it must be said that they never persuaded a sustained policy of hostility towards Catholics and never effected any wholesale clearances. Indeed the evidence would suggest that the parish survived The Great Famine a lot better than areas where the land was more fertile, and this was due in no small way to the generosity and the compassion of the landlord.

Sir Charles Style offered a site for a catholic church at the end of the 18th century and also offered a contribution of £100 of the cost of erecting this church stipulating however that it should be located in the western side of his demesne near Brockagh where the greater percentage of the population were catholic. This church was started and built to the square in Brockagh near where Annie Houston lives today. However the more influential section of the people lived on the eastern side of the parish and insisted on their claim that the church should be built in Kiltyferrigal. Building ceased on the site in Brockagh. Sir Charles Styles resisted for a time and refused to support a building in Kiltyferrigal but eventually he acquiesced and paid £50. Later on, he contributed the balance of the £100. The church which was on the site where Glenfin Hall is now was built in 1825 by Rev. Michael Doherty, P.P. Stranorlar.