TreeAlive
‹ Sites and Monuments Record, Ireland

Sites and Monuments Record · Ireland

Settlement cluster

Rathmolyon, County Meath, Ireland

Ordnance Survey six-inch map, 2nd edition (1888–1915) covering the location of Settlement cluster, Rathmolyon, County Meath, with a pin at the register's coordinates
Ordnance Survey six-inch map, 2nd edition (1888–1915), covering this location. Courtesy of the National Library of Scotland. The pin is ours, placed from the register's coordinates.

The record

Townland
Rathmolyon
County
Meath
Country
Ireland
First-edition OS map
Not indicated
Latest-edition OS map
Not indicated
Coordinates
53.48816, -6.80368
SMR number
ME042-020004-

Slide toward Today to fade the historical sheet and see the modern map underneath.

David Rumsey Map Collection, Stanford Libraries

4 historical maps cover this location, the earliest the 1790 map "Composite: Ireland." (David Rumsey Map Collection, Stanford Libraries).

Historical maps covering this location

  • 1790 · Composite: Ireland. (David Rumsey Map Collection, Stanford Libraries)
  • 1799 · Ireland. (David Rumsey Map Collection, Stanford Libraries)
  • 1830 · V.3:11-15:XV. Britisches Reich. C. Kon: Ireland. a. Prov: Leinster. Counties: 1-12 (David Rumsey Map Collection, Stanford Libraries)
  • 1891 · Ireland 16 (David Rumsey Map Collection, Stanford Libraries)

Get directions ↗

This record in the National Monuments Service's Historic Environment Viewer ↗

The National Monuments Service's description

The church of Rathmolyon was held by the Knights Hospitallers of Kilmainham (DU018-020026-) since the early thirteenth century (Sheehy 1962, vol. 1, 148-9), and a settlement may have developed around it. In the Civil Survey (1654) Rathmullian is described as ‘a church and Divers Farm houses’ (Simington 1940, 178), and it is represented as a church with some cabins on the Down Survey (1656-8) barony map. The settlement is depicted as an E-W street village on a Scalé map of 1767, and the present cross-roads first appears on Larkin’s map of 1812.
Archaeological monitoring and excavation (07E0922) by D. Shine of a trench for a water pipe W of the graveyard recorded the rath (ME042-020002-) after which the townland and parish are named as well as evidence of metal-working (ME042-020003-) and tillage plots related to the settlement (excavations.ie 2008:960, 961). A band of E-W furrows (Wth c. 10m) overlies the interior of the rath, and just S of the graveyard a large ditch (Wth of top 2.1m; max. D 1.13m) was recorded from which a medieval blade was recovered. This might have formed a field boundary with a single post-hole just S of it, and only agricultural activity represented further S by a smaller drain and five furrows. This created a narrow field (Wth c. 20m) and could represent another plot or messauge of the settlement that was probably centered on the church and the E-W street. (Shine 2009, 16-19)

Compiled by: Michael Moore

Date of upload; 26 April, 2021

References

Shine, D. 2009a Full and Final Report on Archaeological Monitoring at Rathmolyon, Co. Meath… Licence: 07E0922. Unpublished report, CRDS

Nearby in the register

Other entries of the same register within about three miles of this one, by straight line.

Sites and Monuments Record data: National Monuments Service, Government of Ireland, licensed under CC BY 4.0. Record text is reproduced unchanged. National Monuments Service, Government of Ireland · CC BY 4.0
All Settlement cluster in Meath All County Meath records All Ireland Heritage registers Historical markers (US)National Register of Historic Places (US)
See your own family's places on a living map