History Detectives

Another reason for staying at Newry is of course the hunt for family history, Lynnes family history to be precise. Not too far away is the village of Hilltown which nestles in the shadow of the Mountains of Mourne. It is the nearest village to the townland of Clonduff, or is it parish of Clonduff? I must admit I am not yet completely comfortable with the different land divisions and I sometimes find its all very confusing. However as the day was so nice and Walter offered to run us out, we jumped at  the opportunity of a visit starting with the local Catholic church.

 

Luckily Walter is very nearly a local despite originally coming from Fleetwood, and knew the church so we went straight there, the view above is of Hilltown from the church steps.

  

The church is The Church of St John the Evangelist, in the parish of Clonduff in the townland of Ballymaghery. Founded in 1850.

 

It is rather lovely inside and has many beautiful stained glass windows.

 

 

We tried to speak to the priest but he was obviously not at home so we scoured the graveyard for evidence of the McConville family. There they were, but all fairly recent graves, however at least it proved that we were probably in the right place. There were probably only a couple of dozen surnames in the whole graveyard.

 

 

as we walked back with Walter we noticed that the priest had returned so we went over to introduce ourselves and Lynne soon got to grips with the arcane script of the parish records, unfortunately with little success.

 

However Father was quite happy for us to return if we could get any more information, it is not inconceivable that there is an error in our information and more detective work is needed. For example we are unsure whether one date we have is for a baptism or a birth?

 

Grand day out for all that! Once again thank you to Walter for his generous help.