BUN-NA-MAIRGIE FRIARY.
By H. C. LAWLOR, M.A., M.R.I.A.
PRELIMINARY REPORT ON THE REPAIR
AND PRESERVATION.
It is hardly necessary to say here that Saint Francis of Assisi was born in the year 1182. It was not until he was 21 that he became devoted to religious and charitable pursuits, which he followed with extraordinary activity. In 1210 he founded, with the sanction of Pope Innocent III, the Franciscan order, followed in 1212 by the female order, under Saint Clare, known as the 2nd Order or Poor Clares, and in 1220, the third order known as Tertiaries. The latter was in the main an order of lay teachers and preachers, though in most of the houses of the 3rd order were one or more ordained clerical members. Saint Francis died in 1226 at the early age of 44, but not before he had seen his religious orders spread over much of Europe and into England. The first Franciscan house founded in Ireland was at Youghal, shortly after, or possibly before, the death of Saint Francis, followed by others at Cork, Down, Dublin, Drogheda, Dundalk and Carrickfergus. These were houses of the first order, however; the third order in time became partly independent of the headquarters in Rome. Hence it comes that of the houses of the third order we often can trace little or no history. Bun-na-mairgie finds no mention in either the Vatican registers, or the records of the Head House of the Franciscans at Rome. It has suffered like many other monuments of antiquity from careless writers. Thus one finds in the account of Bun-na-mairgie in the Ulster Journal of Archaeology, 2nd series, vol. iv, that the founder “is said” to have been William de Burgho, Earl of Ulster, in the year 1202. Now the Franciscan 3rd order was not founded for eighteen years after that date, and William de Burgho, Earl of Ulster, was not born until 1305. The same article says a few pages later that the architecture of the Friary is clearly 14th century. I think that the official report of the Ministry of Finance will, once and for all, clear the pages of history of all these ridiculous assertions.
O’Laverty’s account of Bun-na-mairgie in his Down and Connor, vol. iv, is very good, but much has been discovered in the work of excavation and examination to supplement O’Laverty. He and Reeves cite an anonymous MS. in the British Museum, evidently written by a member of the order, giving a brief note of the founders and dates of foundation of the houses of the Franciscan order in Ireland. This document, although anonymous, bears internal evidence of accuracy; it states that the Friary was founded in the year 1500, by Roderick MacUillin, chief of his nation. Now Roderick MacUillin was an authentic personage, and finds mention in the Annals as a man with grown up sons in the year 1513. The architectural report of the Ministry fully confirms the accuracy of the statement referred to, and I think it is now finally established.
The official reports of the Ministry are two; one relates to the work done and the other to the Architect’s Report of the details. I propose to read them, and afterwards to make a short commentary upon them, and add something regarding traditions and legends connected with the Friary.
BUN-NA-MAIRGIE FRIARY.
Report on the Operations conducted by the Ancient
Monuments Branch, Ministry of Finance, on behalf of the
Belfast Natural History Society, July to October, 1931.
The work at Bun-na-mairgie Friary was commenced on July 8th and has now been suspended owing to the approach of weather unsuitable for operations at masonry. The ground throughout the Friary has been lowered to the original floor level, and loose masonry discovered has been secured from immediate danger. In the near future, however, an extensive expenditure on repointing will be necessary in order to place the remains in a reasonably secure condition.
The details of the work done are as follows : --
1. The Church: The clearing was commenced from the western end, the sill of the western door with part of the internal splay (but no jamb stones) was exposed, together with the lower course of the complete west wall. The foundation was found to extend to the remarkable depth of 5 feet below floor level, but there was no evidence of outside steps. Any human remains found were lowered below the new ground level. The former tombstones, where flat and without inscription, were laid in approximately their old positions, but, of course, at a lower level, so as to be flush with the new ground level. By this means if they were of any use for identification their use would still remain. Those tombstones or monuments which were not of a rectangular nature, or which bore an inscription, have been placed against a wall in the immediate vicinity of where they were found, as much as possible of the stone being buried without obscuring any lettering. A very small and rude stone cross of the same type as that over the “Nun’s Grave “ has been re-erected in its original locality, but on the ground level.
The main supports of a stone altar were disclosed underneath the east window. No stone that would serve for the top slab was found. The indications were that part of this altar was hollow and contained a door at its north end. The monument, marking the burial place of the Stuarts of Dundermot and Francis Stuart, Roman Catholic Bishop of Down and Connor, in the north-east corner of the Church was not moved, but was strengthened at the base.
2. The Dayroom or Chapterhouse: The original floor level, with small traces of cobble paving, has been exposed, an average depth of 15 inches of silted soil being removed for this purpose. In this apartment were found a richly embossed silver coffin plate (18th Century style), part of a stone column with cap, part of a stone cross, several pieces of modern glazed pottery. This room has a remarkable barrel-shaped vault, but is and will probably remain very dark, as its windows are partially underground and one of them is obscured by a large modern sepulchral monument in the Churchyard against the external face of the wall.
3. Sacristy: A small apartment with 3 aumbries, original floor level (stone filling) exposed, no burials. The only object found was a broken quern stone.
4. Passage between Sacristy and Church: Original floor level with traces of broken paving of stone flags found 15 inches below surface level. No finds.
5. Top of Vaults over 2, 3 and 4: Wind blown deposits of sand and earth, grass tufts and debris fallen from upper storey, removed, exposed some small remains of rough stone floor very much disturbed. In general, however, the appearance is simply that of the reverse side of the barrel vault below. The masonry was prepared for pointing and the vault for grouting. A first floor latrine with shaft to drain below ground has been exposed at the northern end of this apartment. Portions of the staircase leading up from the Dayroom level are still in position. The supposed fireplace at one end of the upper room is thought to be an erection of late date.
The filling of the spandrils (or pockets) of the vaulting was found to be a mixture of sand and loam levelled off with ashes (probably as a base for a stone floor). Some thick green glass (probably part of a vessel) was found in the filling.
In the debris of stone and mortar, covering the vaulting of the floor, fragments of thick green glazed pottery and the stem of a glass goblet were found. Fragments of decorated glazed pottery were found in a small cupboard at the S. end of the upper apartment.
Coarse dark pottery fragments were found beside the latrine drain.
For the proper treatment of the outer surface of the vaults it was necessary to remove the filling from the spandrils or pockets.
6. Fabric generally: The wall tops have been cleaned and weather pointed throughout the buildings, and the east gable and window have been tamped in cement and pointed in lime and coarse sand to harmonise with the old sound pointing elsewhere.”
ARCHITECT’S REPORT ON FABRIC, BUN-NA-MAIRGIE FRIARY, COUNTY ANTRIM.
“The style of the buildings agrees with The British Museum MS.’s ascription of the foundation to the year 1500. The work is in the vernacular Irish style of the 15th and 16th centuries, and many of its details are interesting as showing the native inclination, in work of that period, to avoid contemporary English fashion in architecture. It shows that peculiar tendency in late vernacular building to reintroduce style forms from earlier work; such, for example, as the round arch, which is frequently used with a pointed arch in a single feature, as in the smaller doorways at Bun-na-mairgie. In ornament the early interlacing patterns are revived and the tracery of the windows has no parallel in English work.
The general arrangement shows a church to the South, with a cloister and domestic buildings to the North. The church is a single parallelogram 24' 6" wide and almost 100' long. Its main light was from the East. There is a small window in the south wall, and there were apparently three others, but they have been built up sometime before the final abandonment of the church. There is no evidence of any windows on the North, or any communication with the cloister which lay against the church on that side; but near the east end there is a small doorway giving access to a narrow passage which forms the first apartment of the domestic buildings. The division between choir and nave was apparently a wooden screen set close to the eastern jamb of one of the south windows. The beamholes for this screen can be seen on the opposite wall. As there is only one series of holes it seems unlikely that a double division of screen and pulpitum existed. The base of the eastern altar is only a few inches higher than the threshhold of the western entrance so that choir and nave were at almost the same level. Of the western gable very little remains, and of the doorway merely the much worn threshold. In the. eastern gable we find evidence of the replacement of an earlier window by a broader one. The later window was of three lights, and its style points to insertion at the end of the sixteenth or early in the seventeenth century. It was, perhaps, part of a general repair following the burning of the church in 1584, when the English were attacked while in occupation. The rough relieving arch of the older window was retained to uphold the gable-top during the insertion of the later work. The stonework of the earlier window recess and arch was largely reused. The springing stones of the inner arch are steeper in pitch than those above and show the manner in which the mason adapted the material of an earlier narrow opening to fit the wider arch required for the new window. The carved terminals of the earlier dripstone were pushed apart to accommodate the outer arch and dripstone of the new window. The re-used stonework may be readily distinguished from the new by the traces of burning which it bears, and the new or reworked stone by the method of its jointing to the old. In the nearby church of Magherntemple there is a two-light eastern window with similar carved terminals to its dripstone. The whole window is probably not unlike the original eastern window of Bun-na-mairgie.
On the north wall the McNaghten tomb, dated 1630, offers a clue to the condition of the church around that date. To accommodate this monument the lower part of a window was built up, and a stone removed from the jamb of another for the better bonding of the new work to the old. In both cases the added masonry was plastered, and this plastering establishes the fact that the church was then or since in use. The stonework of the new monument was carefully worked to the level of the church floor, as established by the western threshold. This points to the fitting of the monument to a paved level, and is further evidence that the church was then in use.
A stone built into the south gable of the Antrim chapel and vault bears an inscription which suggests that the present structure may be a replacement of an earlier McDonnell burying place. This inscription records that Randal, first Earl of Antrim, caused this sacred place to be built in 1621. If the church was in use in 1630, as the evidence of the McNaghten tomb indicates, it is difficult to accept the present Antrim chapel and vault as that erected in 1621. The steps which would be necessary to reach the elevated entrance to the chapel would seriously restrict the space around the altar in the church. The need for a chapel for funeral pomps would not arise until after the destruction of the church. The north gable of the Antrim chapel is raised off the top of the south wall of the church and leaves no provision for a. gutter to collect water from the roof of the church. The vaulted lower storey seems to have been built beyond an earlier smaller building, rather wider than the passage on the opposite side of the church, and gabled east and west. A fragment of an inclined rafter still remaining in a beamhole several feet below the present roof, seems to be a scrap of an earlier roof, such as would cover a small building with a main axis east and west. The vault and chapel in their present form may date from the return of the McDonnells after the restoration of Charles. II. It is unbelievable that the church could have survived the troublous times of the Civil War. The need for a place for funeral services may have led the returned McDonnells to erect the present chapel above a new and larger vault built outside the ruins of Randal’s little building of 1621.The details of windows and the bricks used internally for the arches and altar are reconcilable with a date late in the seventeenth century.
Of the cloister and domestic buildings, the present remains represent perhaps one third of the usual accommodation. The remainder may have been of timber, burnt in 1584 and not rebuilt. The economy of the restoration as seen in the building up of damaged windows in the church suggests that the friars, on their return, did little more than renew timber and thatch to cover the stone buildings that had survived. The extent of the cloister can be traced on two sides. On the south a label course marks the junction of the cloister roof with the wall of the church, and a row of stone corbels gives the spacing of the main timbers to uphold the roof. Similar evidence remains along the east side where the cloister roof abutted against a two storey range of buildings. The eastern range is all that now remains of the domestic buildings. On the ground floor, at the same level as the cloister walk, are three apartments. The first is a narrow vaulted passage against the north side of the choir. It is entered from the S.E. angle of the cloister and has a little porch from which a stair ascends to the dormitory. The passage seems to have had a wooden ceiling below the rough stone vault. There was originally a doorway at the eastern end. The adjoining apartment was apparently a sacristy. It has two recesses, one at the west and the other beside an eastern window'. There were also two cupboards to which doors were fitted, but the backs have since been broken out. The third and largest apartment is entered from the east cloister walk and had no other entrance. It is vaulted in stone, and the method of its construction upon a wicker centering may be seen. The general arrangement of this room suggests that it may have been used as a refectory. There is a small window on the long east wall. This may have been the reader’s window and the cupboard beside it used for books. There was a larger window, for general lighting, at the north end. The floor was paved with small cobblestones of which a few patches remain.
The upper storey, covering all three apartments, was a single room, approached by the stair from the little porch in the angle of the cloisters. The windows are small and regularly spaced. If we assume that these windows occupied the spaces between beds as in a dormitory we can reconstruct the purpose of this room. The complement of beds would be eight; nine if we place another bed against the south gable. The north end is much destroyed, but shows the arrangement of the latrine with a shaft to the ground below. The south gable is complete, built sufficiently far from the wall of the church to leave a stone gutter to collect water from the church roof. A window high up in this gable borrows light over the church. A cupboard was contrived under the higher end of the stone gutter. When cleared of debris this cupboard was found to contain a little store of coal in which were fragments of 17th century pottery. A few fragments of stone built together without mortar form a sort of platform against the south wall of the dormitory. Traces of fire on the wall behind show that the platform was used as an open hearth. Smoke escaped through the little window, which was not intended for a smoke hole for it is grooved for glass. The hearth is more likely to have been built by “ squatters ” than during the regular occupation of the friary.
The floor of the dormitory was supported upon the vaulted ceilings of the three apartments below. The “ pockets ” were filled with sand and soil. A layer of furnace ashes found above this filling may have been the base of a stone or tile floor; but no paving was found when the debris from the upper walls was cleared. The absence of flooring or burnt and decayed wood here and in the church indicates that the final destruction of the friary was not by fire or decay but by deliberate dismantling and removal of roofs and floors.
The detached gatehouse to the east of the Friary sits astride a mound of earth very much disturbed by later burials. The extent of this enclosing vallum can be traced for thirty yards to the north of the gatehouse, and for forty feet to the south where it returns and joins the east front of the domestic buildings. The northern return is not clear, but its line may be marked by the present graveyard wall or it may have been lost when the adjoining links were laid out. The enclosure thus formed was the outer court of the Friary to which the gatehouse formed the regular entrance. To the south is a smaller and lower court lying to the east of the church, enclosed by a similar vallum. The breadth of the vallum to both courts is ten feet, and its height varies from two feet to eight feet. The ground within has been much raised by burials. The elevation of the vallum is greatest at the S.E. angle where the graves are less numerous. The southern court was probably the friars’ burial ground; it lies in the favourite position at the east of the choir, and would be entered through the passage on the north side of the church. The gatehouse has a small upper chamber with a fireplace and was apparently approached by a wooden stairway between the outer and inner gates and may have been used for the accommodation of such guests as were not allowed within the precincts. A water course passed through the vallum and continued through the base of the latrine at the N. end of the domestic wing. A bed of washed sand and gravel marks its further course westwards toward the main river. The source appears to have been from the same river. An artificial water course may be seen serving a mill half a mile to the S.E. of the church, and continuing as a tail race to within a hundred yards of the Friary, although its discharge back into the river could have been effected in a few yards of the mill. From the point of its nearest approach to the Friary the course makes a sudden turn and follows the natural level of the ground to the south of the church, and rejoins the main river. This diversion would be a natural sequence to the destruction of the Friary and of the channel either, by extension of the graveyard or by the construction of the present main road between the Friary and the sea.”
November, 1931.
This report is, I think, a very important document and clears up what hitherto has been puzzling and uncertain; furthermore it quite harmonises with certain fragmentary records preserved to us of events that occurred after the burning of 1584.
First, when Randal McDonnell succeeded his brother Sir James in 1601 and received from James I in 1606 a re-grant of the immense family estate from the Cutts of Coleraine to the Curran of Larne, he proceeded to build a new castle at Mairghieton, which he and his wife, Alice O’Neill, made their headquarters. Mairgieton is the present Ballycastle. The Parish Church of Culfeightrin was a good distance away and across two rivers which were often impassible in flood time. O’Laverty refers to a legend that the existing east window was a gift of the Countess Alice, and this fits in exactly with the Report. I suggest that the 1st Earl of Antrim dismantled Culfeightrin old Church about 1620 and restored the Friary Church of Bun-na-Mairgie as the Parish Church, at the same time erecting a small vault as suggested in the Report; a reference to the plan will show apparently where this vault may still exist between the large vault and the south wall of the nave. Apparently both this small vault and the MacNaghten tomb (of 1630) were erected in a church then in constant and regular use. Then there is a letter quoted by O’Laverty, describing a confirmation service held in the church in October, 1639, confirming this.
We have some account of the 1641 rebellion, when the widowed Countess fled from Ballycastle, and the place was occupied by Scottish troops. It is safe to say that these troops, Scottish Presbyterians of the most bigoted sort, put an end to the old Catholic church of Bun-na- Mairgie. Apparently from the Report it was not burned, but dismantled, the roof being taken off for use elsewhere. This is borne out by the fact that no evidence of burning was found in the nave, and beyond a few broken fragments, no slates remained in the debris.
Then the suggestion that the existing large Antrim Vault was erected by the 1st Marquis after the restoration, say in 1666, has strong support from the fact that his coffin is the oldest one in the vault and that the remains of neither Sorley Boy, Sir James nor Randal the 1st Earl are among those in the vault. The Report shows beyond doubt that the existing vault and mortuary chapel above were erected when the church was again a ruin, and I hold to the belief, first mooted by the late W. J. Fennell, that the circular arched doorway now in the mortuary chapel was removed by the 1st Marquis from the west gable of the church, and the material of the gable used in the erection of this chapel. That the doorway was not made for the mortuary chapel is evident from the fact that the windows of the chapel are clearly Stuart period, while the doorway belongs to the period described in the Report as in keeping with that of the erection of the Friary, i.e., 1500.
LEGENDS.
Having dealt with the facts regarding the Friary of Bun-na-Mairgie, it is only right to refer to legendry history.
O’Laverty gathered a good deal of legendry lore regarding the so-called “ Black Nun,” one Julia Maquillin, who at some vague date is said to have lived in the gatehouse. I refer those who desire further information regarding this somewhat nebulous personage to O’Laverty’s Down and Connor, volume iv. It is sufficient to say here that in her humility she is said to have desired in her last illness that she should be buried just inside the west door of the church so that all entering it should trample her under their feet. The small holed cross at that spot, just inside where the doorway once stood, is supposed to mark Julia Maquillin’s grave.
When the debris in the nave came to be removed it was found that this little holed cross was set in the debris, some three feet higher than the original floor level; furthermore no human remains were found in connection with the stone. Of course such might have decayed entirely through time, but it is worthy of note that if a body had been buried here, and the small cross placed to mark the burial, it occurred after the ground had silted up, and therefore could not have been an event of great antiquity. My own opinion is that this little holed cross and the small rough hewn cross near it are much older than Bun-na-Mairgie itself and may have been brought here from some older church, possibly Culfeightrin old church, and that the holed cross may have been put where it was on the silted up soil in modern times to fit the tradition of Julia Maquillin’s desire to be buried inside the church door.
An exactly similar holed cross is at Layd old church, Cushendall, appropriated to serve as a modern headstone.
Another legend of Bun-na-Mairgie has more evidence to support its authenticity, and is here related in print for the first time. A friend of mine, a member of an old and respected family in the Braid Valley, has written it out for me; he is absolutely reliable and the story has been carefully preserved in his family for three generations. I suppress names. My friend’s grandmother was born in the Braid Valley about the year 1790; at the age of 12, say about 1802, she knew the Parish Priest of Braid Parish, who was then a venerable old man of over eighty, who frequently visited her parents’ house and knew them intimately. His story of Bun-na-mairgie, often told by him to this family and of course, others, was so clear and detailed that it impressed itself distinctly upon his hearers. He related that he was born on a farm up on the hills some miles east of Ballyvoy, in the large parish of Culfeightrin, and that he daily had to trudge some three miles to the hedge school near the present Culfeightrin chapel. One day, when about 11 years old, which brings us back to about the year 1730, he decided to play truant, or as we say here mitch from school, and have a grand time to himself. Towards the end of the day he found himself for the first time in a town, and paused to survey the wondrous displays in the shop windows. It was Ballycastle. As evening came on he realised that he was in for an awful “ hiding ” when he reached his far off home, so he thought he would postpone that painful event for a later day and stay where he was for the night. But where to sleep was the trouble. He wandered into Bun-na- Mairgie and, footsore and tired, made himself a bed of hay in the Sacristy and soon was sound asleep. How long he lay he knew not until he was waked by a voice which called “Is there anyone here who can respond to the mass?” Frightened he lay until the voice called out the same question a third time. He got up and timidly replied “ Yes, Father, I can.” He came into the church where he saw a priest in full vestments at the altar, which was lighted with candles and whereon were chalice and paten and the sacred missal. The church appeared to be roofed and in order as if in daily use. The priest said the mass, the boy answering the responses, and after the De Profundis, the priest told him that for many years he had come there every Friday at midnight waiting for someone to answer the responses to complete a mass which he should have said in his lifetime, but no one had come until now; he commended the boy to study for the priesthood and vanished. The place had resumed its ruined state and all was dark.
When morning came he wended his way to his home. His father and mother listened to his wondrous tale and forgave him his offence. They brought him to Ballycastle to show them where the vision had taken place, and on making enquiries there were told by many that, the mysterious light in the Friary was well known, but that no one had ever ventured into the ruin at midnight to find out its cause.
So the boy’s parents got him educated for the priesthood, and he ended his days as Parish Priest of the Braid, where the story opens.
The name Bun-na-Mairgie, often modernised into Bonamargey derives from Bun, the sandy mouth of a stream, as in Bundoran and Buncrana; Mairgie is the old name for the river formed by the confluence of the Carey and Shesk rivers. It may derive from the fact that a very old market was held near the old harbour at the river’s mouth. This market was attended by many people from the Scottish Isles, as well as the surrounding country. At these markets or fairs games took place, and even bull fights. This fact is responsible for the name Dunanainey, belonging to the old home of the McDonnells close to Ballycastle, the fort of the fair or the games.
By H. C. LAWLOR, M.A., M.R.I.A.
PRELIMINARY REPORT ON THE REPAIR
AND PRESERVATION.
It is hardly necessary to say here that Saint Francis of Assisi was born in the year 1182. It was not until he was 21 that he became devoted to religious and charitable pursuits, which he followed with extraordinary activity. In 1210 he founded, with the sanction of Pope Innocent III, the Franciscan order, followed in 1212 by the female order, under Saint Clare, known as the 2nd Order or Poor Clares, and in 1220, the third order known as Tertiaries. The latter was in the main an order of lay teachers and preachers, though in most of the houses of the 3rd order were one or more ordained clerical members. Saint Francis died in 1226 at the early age of 44, but not before he had seen his religious orders spread over much of Europe and into England. The first Franciscan house founded in Ireland was at Youghal, shortly after, or possibly before, the death of Saint Francis, followed by others at Cork, Down, Dublin, Drogheda, Dundalk and Carrickfergus. These were houses of the first order, however; the third order in time became partly independent of the headquarters in Rome. Hence it comes that of the houses of the third order we often can trace little or no history. Bun-na-mairgie finds no mention in either the Vatican registers, or the records of the Head House of the Franciscans at Rome. It has suffered like many other monuments of antiquity from careless writers. Thus one finds in the account of Bun-na-mairgie in the Ulster Journal of Archaeology, 2nd series, vol. iv, that the founder “is said” to have been William de Burgho, Earl of Ulster, in the year 1202. Now the Franciscan 3rd order was not founded for eighteen years after that date, and William de Burgho, Earl of Ulster, was not born until 1305. The same article says a few pages later that the architecture of the Friary is clearly 14th century. I think that the official report of the Ministry of Finance will, once and for all, clear the pages of history of all these ridiculous assertions.
O’Laverty’s account of Bun-na-mairgie in his Down and Connor, vol. iv, is very good, but much has been discovered in the work of excavation and examination to supplement O’Laverty. He and Reeves cite an anonymous MS. in the British Museum, evidently written by a member of the order, giving a brief note of the founders and dates of foundation of the houses of the Franciscan order in Ireland. This document, although anonymous, bears internal evidence of accuracy; it states that the Friary was founded in the year 1500, by Roderick MacUillin, chief of his nation. Now Roderick MacUillin was an authentic personage, and finds mention in the Annals as a man with grown up sons in the year 1513. The architectural report of the Ministry fully confirms the accuracy of the statement referred to, and I think it is now finally established.
The official reports of the Ministry are two; one relates to the work done and the other to the Architect’s Report of the details. I propose to read them, and afterwards to make a short commentary upon them, and add something regarding traditions and legends connected with the Friary.
BUN-NA-MAIRGIE FRIARY.
Report on the Operations conducted by the Ancient
Monuments Branch, Ministry of Finance, on behalf of the
Belfast Natural History Society, July to October, 1931.
The work at Bun-na-mairgie Friary was commenced on July 8th and has now been suspended owing to the approach of weather unsuitable for operations at masonry. The ground throughout the Friary has been lowered to the original floor level, and loose masonry discovered has been secured from immediate danger. In the near future, however, an extensive expenditure on repointing will be necessary in order to place the remains in a reasonably secure condition.
The details of the work done are as follows : --
1. The Church: The clearing was commenced from the western end, the sill of the western door with part of the internal splay (but no jamb stones) was exposed, together with the lower course of the complete west wall. The foundation was found to extend to the remarkable depth of 5 feet below floor level, but there was no evidence of outside steps. Any human remains found were lowered below the new ground level. The former tombstones, where flat and without inscription, were laid in approximately their old positions, but, of course, at a lower level, so as to be flush with the new ground level. By this means if they were of any use for identification their use would still remain. Those tombstones or monuments which were not of a rectangular nature, or which bore an inscription, have been placed against a wall in the immediate vicinity of where they were found, as much as possible of the stone being buried without obscuring any lettering. A very small and rude stone cross of the same type as that over the “Nun’s Grave “ has been re-erected in its original locality, but on the ground level.
The main supports of a stone altar were disclosed underneath the east window. No stone that would serve for the top slab was found. The indications were that part of this altar was hollow and contained a door at its north end. The monument, marking the burial place of the Stuarts of Dundermot and Francis Stuart, Roman Catholic Bishop of Down and Connor, in the north-east corner of the Church was not moved, but was strengthened at the base.
2. The Dayroom or Chapterhouse: The original floor level, with small traces of cobble paving, has been exposed, an average depth of 15 inches of silted soil being removed for this purpose. In this apartment were found a richly embossed silver coffin plate (18th Century style), part of a stone column with cap, part of a stone cross, several pieces of modern glazed pottery. This room has a remarkable barrel-shaped vault, but is and will probably remain very dark, as its windows are partially underground and one of them is obscured by a large modern sepulchral monument in the Churchyard against the external face of the wall.
3. Sacristy: A small apartment with 3 aumbries, original floor level (stone filling) exposed, no burials. The only object found was a broken quern stone.
4. Passage between Sacristy and Church: Original floor level with traces of broken paving of stone flags found 15 inches below surface level. No finds.
5. Top of Vaults over 2, 3 and 4: Wind blown deposits of sand and earth, grass tufts and debris fallen from upper storey, removed, exposed some small remains of rough stone floor very much disturbed. In general, however, the appearance is simply that of the reverse side of the barrel vault below. The masonry was prepared for pointing and the vault for grouting. A first floor latrine with shaft to drain below ground has been exposed at the northern end of this apartment. Portions of the staircase leading up from the Dayroom level are still in position. The supposed fireplace at one end of the upper room is thought to be an erection of late date.
The filling of the spandrils (or pockets) of the vaulting was found to be a mixture of sand and loam levelled off with ashes (probably as a base for a stone floor). Some thick green glass (probably part of a vessel) was found in the filling.
In the debris of stone and mortar, covering the vaulting of the floor, fragments of thick green glazed pottery and the stem of a glass goblet were found. Fragments of decorated glazed pottery were found in a small cupboard at the S. end of the upper apartment.
Coarse dark pottery fragments were found beside the latrine drain.
For the proper treatment of the outer surface of the vaults it was necessary to remove the filling from the spandrils or pockets.
6. Fabric generally: The wall tops have been cleaned and weather pointed throughout the buildings, and the east gable and window have been tamped in cement and pointed in lime and coarse sand to harmonise with the old sound pointing elsewhere.”
ARCHITECT’S REPORT ON FABRIC, BUN-NA-MAIRGIE FRIARY, COUNTY ANTRIM.
“The style of the buildings agrees with The British Museum MS.’s ascription of the foundation to the year 1500. The work is in the vernacular Irish style of the 15th and 16th centuries, and many of its details are interesting as showing the native inclination, in work of that period, to avoid contemporary English fashion in architecture. It shows that peculiar tendency in late vernacular building to reintroduce style forms from earlier work; such, for example, as the round arch, which is frequently used with a pointed arch in a single feature, as in the smaller doorways at Bun-na-mairgie. In ornament the early interlacing patterns are revived and the tracery of the windows has no parallel in English work.
The general arrangement shows a church to the South, with a cloister and domestic buildings to the North. The church is a single parallelogram 24' 6" wide and almost 100' long. Its main light was from the East. There is a small window in the south wall, and there were apparently three others, but they have been built up sometime before the final abandonment of the church. There is no evidence of any windows on the North, or any communication with the cloister which lay against the church on that side; but near the east end there is a small doorway giving access to a narrow passage which forms the first apartment of the domestic buildings. The division between choir and nave was apparently a wooden screen set close to the eastern jamb of one of the south windows. The beamholes for this screen can be seen on the opposite wall. As there is only one series of holes it seems unlikely that a double division of screen and pulpitum existed. The base of the eastern altar is only a few inches higher than the threshhold of the western entrance so that choir and nave were at almost the same level. Of the western gable very little remains, and of the doorway merely the much worn threshold. In the. eastern gable we find evidence of the replacement of an earlier window by a broader one. The later window was of three lights, and its style points to insertion at the end of the sixteenth or early in the seventeenth century. It was, perhaps, part of a general repair following the burning of the church in 1584, when the English were attacked while in occupation. The rough relieving arch of the older window was retained to uphold the gable-top during the insertion of the later work. The stonework of the earlier window recess and arch was largely reused. The springing stones of the inner arch are steeper in pitch than those above and show the manner in which the mason adapted the material of an earlier narrow opening to fit the wider arch required for the new window. The carved terminals of the earlier dripstone were pushed apart to accommodate the outer arch and dripstone of the new window. The re-used stonework may be readily distinguished from the new by the traces of burning which it bears, and the new or reworked stone by the method of its jointing to the old. In the nearby church of Magherntemple there is a two-light eastern window with similar carved terminals to its dripstone. The whole window is probably not unlike the original eastern window of Bun-na-mairgie.
On the north wall the McNaghten tomb, dated 1630, offers a clue to the condition of the church around that date. To accommodate this monument the lower part of a window was built up, and a stone removed from the jamb of another for the better bonding of the new work to the old. In both cases the added masonry was plastered, and this plastering establishes the fact that the church was then or since in use. The stonework of the new monument was carefully worked to the level of the church floor, as established by the western threshold. This points to the fitting of the monument to a paved level, and is further evidence that the church was then in use.
A stone built into the south gable of the Antrim chapel and vault bears an inscription which suggests that the present structure may be a replacement of an earlier McDonnell burying place. This inscription records that Randal, first Earl of Antrim, caused this sacred place to be built in 1621. If the church was in use in 1630, as the evidence of the McNaghten tomb indicates, it is difficult to accept the present Antrim chapel and vault as that erected in 1621. The steps which would be necessary to reach the elevated entrance to the chapel would seriously restrict the space around the altar in the church. The need for a chapel for funeral pomps would not arise until after the destruction of the church. The north gable of the Antrim chapel is raised off the top of the south wall of the church and leaves no provision for a. gutter to collect water from the roof of the church. The vaulted lower storey seems to have been built beyond an earlier smaller building, rather wider than the passage on the opposite side of the church, and gabled east and west. A fragment of an inclined rafter still remaining in a beamhole several feet below the present roof, seems to be a scrap of an earlier roof, such as would cover a small building with a main axis east and west. The vault and chapel in their present form may date from the return of the McDonnells after the restoration of Charles. II. It is unbelievable that the church could have survived the troublous times of the Civil War. The need for a place for funeral services may have led the returned McDonnells to erect the present chapel above a new and larger vault built outside the ruins of Randal’s little building of 1621.The details of windows and the bricks used internally for the arches and altar are reconcilable with a date late in the seventeenth century.
Of the cloister and domestic buildings, the present remains represent perhaps one third of the usual accommodation. The remainder may have been of timber, burnt in 1584 and not rebuilt. The economy of the restoration as seen in the building up of damaged windows in the church suggests that the friars, on their return, did little more than renew timber and thatch to cover the stone buildings that had survived. The extent of the cloister can be traced on two sides. On the south a label course marks the junction of the cloister roof with the wall of the church, and a row of stone corbels gives the spacing of the main timbers to uphold the roof. Similar evidence remains along the east side where the cloister roof abutted against a two storey range of buildings. The eastern range is all that now remains of the domestic buildings. On the ground floor, at the same level as the cloister walk, are three apartments. The first is a narrow vaulted passage against the north side of the choir. It is entered from the S.E. angle of the cloister and has a little porch from which a stair ascends to the dormitory. The passage seems to have had a wooden ceiling below the rough stone vault. There was originally a doorway at the eastern end. The adjoining apartment was apparently a sacristy. It has two recesses, one at the west and the other beside an eastern window'. There were also two cupboards to which doors were fitted, but the backs have since been broken out. The third and largest apartment is entered from the east cloister walk and had no other entrance. It is vaulted in stone, and the method of its construction upon a wicker centering may be seen. The general arrangement of this room suggests that it may have been used as a refectory. There is a small window on the long east wall. This may have been the reader’s window and the cupboard beside it used for books. There was a larger window, for general lighting, at the north end. The floor was paved with small cobblestones of which a few patches remain.
The upper storey, covering all three apartments, was a single room, approached by the stair from the little porch in the angle of the cloisters. The windows are small and regularly spaced. If we assume that these windows occupied the spaces between beds as in a dormitory we can reconstruct the purpose of this room. The complement of beds would be eight; nine if we place another bed against the south gable. The north end is much destroyed, but shows the arrangement of the latrine with a shaft to the ground below. The south gable is complete, built sufficiently far from the wall of the church to leave a stone gutter to collect water from the church roof. A window high up in this gable borrows light over the church. A cupboard was contrived under the higher end of the stone gutter. When cleared of debris this cupboard was found to contain a little store of coal in which were fragments of 17th century pottery. A few fragments of stone built together without mortar form a sort of platform against the south wall of the dormitory. Traces of fire on the wall behind show that the platform was used as an open hearth. Smoke escaped through the little window, which was not intended for a smoke hole for it is grooved for glass. The hearth is more likely to have been built by “ squatters ” than during the regular occupation of the friary.
The floor of the dormitory was supported upon the vaulted ceilings of the three apartments below. The “ pockets ” were filled with sand and soil. A layer of furnace ashes found above this filling may have been the base of a stone or tile floor; but no paving was found when the debris from the upper walls was cleared. The absence of flooring or burnt and decayed wood here and in the church indicates that the final destruction of the friary was not by fire or decay but by deliberate dismantling and removal of roofs and floors.
The detached gatehouse to the east of the Friary sits astride a mound of earth very much disturbed by later burials. The extent of this enclosing vallum can be traced for thirty yards to the north of the gatehouse, and for forty feet to the south where it returns and joins the east front of the domestic buildings. The northern return is not clear, but its line may be marked by the present graveyard wall or it may have been lost when the adjoining links were laid out. The enclosure thus formed was the outer court of the Friary to which the gatehouse formed the regular entrance. To the south is a smaller and lower court lying to the east of the church, enclosed by a similar vallum. The breadth of the vallum to both courts is ten feet, and its height varies from two feet to eight feet. The ground within has been much raised by burials. The elevation of the vallum is greatest at the S.E. angle where the graves are less numerous. The southern court was probably the friars’ burial ground; it lies in the favourite position at the east of the choir, and would be entered through the passage on the north side of the church. The gatehouse has a small upper chamber with a fireplace and was apparently approached by a wooden stairway between the outer and inner gates and may have been used for the accommodation of such guests as were not allowed within the precincts. A water course passed through the vallum and continued through the base of the latrine at the N. end of the domestic wing. A bed of washed sand and gravel marks its further course westwards toward the main river. The source appears to have been from the same river. An artificial water course may be seen serving a mill half a mile to the S.E. of the church, and continuing as a tail race to within a hundred yards of the Friary, although its discharge back into the river could have been effected in a few yards of the mill. From the point of its nearest approach to the Friary the course makes a sudden turn and follows the natural level of the ground to the south of the church, and rejoins the main river. This diversion would be a natural sequence to the destruction of the Friary and of the channel either, by extension of the graveyard or by the construction of the present main road between the Friary and the sea.”
November, 1931.
This report is, I think, a very important document and clears up what hitherto has been puzzling and uncertain; furthermore it quite harmonises with certain fragmentary records preserved to us of events that occurred after the burning of 1584.
First, when Randal McDonnell succeeded his brother Sir James in 1601 and received from James I in 1606 a re-grant of the immense family estate from the Cutts of Coleraine to the Curran of Larne, he proceeded to build a new castle at Mairghieton, which he and his wife, Alice O’Neill, made their headquarters. Mairgieton is the present Ballycastle. The Parish Church of Culfeightrin was a good distance away and across two rivers which were often impassible in flood time. O’Laverty refers to a legend that the existing east window was a gift of the Countess Alice, and this fits in exactly with the Report. I suggest that the 1st Earl of Antrim dismantled Culfeightrin old Church about 1620 and restored the Friary Church of Bun-na-Mairgie as the Parish Church, at the same time erecting a small vault as suggested in the Report; a reference to the plan will show apparently where this vault may still exist between the large vault and the south wall of the nave. Apparently both this small vault and the MacNaghten tomb (of 1630) were erected in a church then in constant and regular use. Then there is a letter quoted by O’Laverty, describing a confirmation service held in the church in October, 1639, confirming this.
We have some account of the 1641 rebellion, when the widowed Countess fled from Ballycastle, and the place was occupied by Scottish troops. It is safe to say that these troops, Scottish Presbyterians of the most bigoted sort, put an end to the old Catholic church of Bun-na- Mairgie. Apparently from the Report it was not burned, but dismantled, the roof being taken off for use elsewhere. This is borne out by the fact that no evidence of burning was found in the nave, and beyond a few broken fragments, no slates remained in the debris.
Then the suggestion that the existing large Antrim Vault was erected by the 1st Marquis after the restoration, say in 1666, has strong support from the fact that his coffin is the oldest one in the vault and that the remains of neither Sorley Boy, Sir James nor Randal the 1st Earl are among those in the vault. The Report shows beyond doubt that the existing vault and mortuary chapel above were erected when the church was again a ruin, and I hold to the belief, first mooted by the late W. J. Fennell, that the circular arched doorway now in the mortuary chapel was removed by the 1st Marquis from the west gable of the church, and the material of the gable used in the erection of this chapel. That the doorway was not made for the mortuary chapel is evident from the fact that the windows of the chapel are clearly Stuart period, while the doorway belongs to the period described in the Report as in keeping with that of the erection of the Friary, i.e., 1500.
LEGENDS.
Having dealt with the facts regarding the Friary of Bun-na-Mairgie, it is only right to refer to legendry history.
O’Laverty gathered a good deal of legendry lore regarding the so-called “ Black Nun,” one Julia Maquillin, who at some vague date is said to have lived in the gatehouse. I refer those who desire further information regarding this somewhat nebulous personage to O’Laverty’s Down and Connor, volume iv. It is sufficient to say here that in her humility she is said to have desired in her last illness that she should be buried just inside the west door of the church so that all entering it should trample her under their feet. The small holed cross at that spot, just inside where the doorway once stood, is supposed to mark Julia Maquillin’s grave.
When the debris in the nave came to be removed it was found that this little holed cross was set in the debris, some three feet higher than the original floor level; furthermore no human remains were found in connection with the stone. Of course such might have decayed entirely through time, but it is worthy of note that if a body had been buried here, and the small cross placed to mark the burial, it occurred after the ground had silted up, and therefore could not have been an event of great antiquity. My own opinion is that this little holed cross and the small rough hewn cross near it are much older than Bun-na-Mairgie itself and may have been brought here from some older church, possibly Culfeightrin old church, and that the holed cross may have been put where it was on the silted up soil in modern times to fit the tradition of Julia Maquillin’s desire to be buried inside the church door.
An exactly similar holed cross is at Layd old church, Cushendall, appropriated to serve as a modern headstone.
Another legend of Bun-na-Mairgie has more evidence to support its authenticity, and is here related in print for the first time. A friend of mine, a member of an old and respected family in the Braid Valley, has written it out for me; he is absolutely reliable and the story has been carefully preserved in his family for three generations. I suppress names. My friend’s grandmother was born in the Braid Valley about the year 1790; at the age of 12, say about 1802, she knew the Parish Priest of Braid Parish, who was then a venerable old man of over eighty, who frequently visited her parents’ house and knew them intimately. His story of Bun-na-mairgie, often told by him to this family and of course, others, was so clear and detailed that it impressed itself distinctly upon his hearers. He related that he was born on a farm up on the hills some miles east of Ballyvoy, in the large parish of Culfeightrin, and that he daily had to trudge some three miles to the hedge school near the present Culfeightrin chapel. One day, when about 11 years old, which brings us back to about the year 1730, he decided to play truant, or as we say here mitch from school, and have a grand time to himself. Towards the end of the day he found himself for the first time in a town, and paused to survey the wondrous displays in the shop windows. It was Ballycastle. As evening came on he realised that he was in for an awful “ hiding ” when he reached his far off home, so he thought he would postpone that painful event for a later day and stay where he was for the night. But where to sleep was the trouble. He wandered into Bun-na- Mairgie and, footsore and tired, made himself a bed of hay in the Sacristy and soon was sound asleep. How long he lay he knew not until he was waked by a voice which called “Is there anyone here who can respond to the mass?” Frightened he lay until the voice called out the same question a third time. He got up and timidly replied “ Yes, Father, I can.” He came into the church where he saw a priest in full vestments at the altar, which was lighted with candles and whereon were chalice and paten and the sacred missal. The church appeared to be roofed and in order as if in daily use. The priest said the mass, the boy answering the responses, and after the De Profundis, the priest told him that for many years he had come there every Friday at midnight waiting for someone to answer the responses to complete a mass which he should have said in his lifetime, but no one had come until now; he commended the boy to study for the priesthood and vanished. The place had resumed its ruined state and all was dark.
When morning came he wended his way to his home. His father and mother listened to his wondrous tale and forgave him his offence. They brought him to Ballycastle to show them where the vision had taken place, and on making enquiries there were told by many that, the mysterious light in the Friary was well known, but that no one had ever ventured into the ruin at midnight to find out its cause.
So the boy’s parents got him educated for the priesthood, and he ended his days as Parish Priest of the Braid, where the story opens.
The name Bun-na-Mairgie, often modernised into Bonamargey derives from Bun, the sandy mouth of a stream, as in Bundoran and Buncrana; Mairgie is the old name for the river formed by the confluence of the Carey and Shesk rivers. It may derive from the fact that a very old market was held near the old harbour at the river’s mouth. This market was attended by many people from the Scottish Isles, as well as the surrounding country. At these markets or fairs games took place, and even bull fights. This fact is responsible for the name Dunanainey, belonging to the old home of the McDonnells close to Ballycastle, the fort of the fair or the games.