BALLYHUSKARD GRAVEYARD

Ballyhuskard Graveyard lies in the townland of Ballynastraw, parish of Oylegate-Glenbrien, Co. Wexford, Ireland. It once served as the parochial graveyard of the former mediaeval parish of Ballyhuskard. Less than a hectare in extent, the site is rectangular in shape and contains some seventy headstones, many of which are decorated with scripture-based designs specific to the artisan stonecutters who made them. Most of the headstones are in good condition. In the North-East corner there remains part of a wall which is believed to be a remnant of Ballyhuskard Parish Church which existed prior to the Tudor period church confiscations and closures.

There is no townland of Ballyhuskard per se. It was the old parish that was so called. Nevertheless, the cemetery is still called Ballyhuskard Graveyard today by the people of the locality. This survival of the name points to the veritable certainty that this was the site of the parish church of the parish of that name. This in turn supports the suggestion that the fragment of the wall in the cemetery is that of the parish church.


INFERENCES AND POINTS OF INTEREST
The vast majority of surnames inscribed on the headstones are Catholic. The latest burial recorded is dated 1852. Accordingly, despite confiscation of the glebe and churchyard at the Reformation, it can be safely inferred that this graveyard continued to be used as a Catholic cemetery up to the mid-nineteenth century.

A plaque on the external wall remembers those buried here who were killed at the Battle of Vinegar Hill on 21 June, 1798. Tradition says they were buried in a mass grave which was unmarked and is now unknown. One headstone records a father and son who died on that eventful day. Vinegar Hill is five kilometres distant.

Of unique interest is the headstone of John Maguire, who died in 1775, aged 108 years.

Also buried here are brothers Tom and Nicholas Synnott, scions of a leading Catholic family in the district prior to the Cromwellian period. Tom led the decisive flanking attack across the Slaney above Enniscorthy which precipitated the fall of the town to the Wexfordmen on 28th May, 1798. Nicholas was Parish Priest of Oulart in 1798 and it was he who rang ‘the Oulart Bell' to alert the people that the country had risen in revolt.

IMPORTANT NOTICE
Ballyhuskard graveyard is on privately owned land and the entrance passes through the property of two families (see below), who, understandably, must be approached for permission before entering the property which lies at GIS Coordinates 52.468337, -6.494397.

THE HISTORY OF BALLYHUSKARD PARISH.
The early development of the Irish parish system is lost in antiquity but it is known to have had its origin in the Synod of Rathbreasil of 1111 A.D. and that its adoption was speeded up under Norman influence following their arrival in 1169.

The parish offered a clearly defined area, though variable in extent, as a unit to be served by a parish priest and to provide tithe for his support.

The earliest detailed picture of Irish parishes comes from the mid-seventeenth century when, in order to dole out massive tracts of confiscated Catholic lands to Protestant backers of the Cromwellian conquest, it was found necessary to survey the entire country. The result was the Down Survey, made between 1656-1658.

The Down Survey made use of the parish and its constituent townlands as the basic units with which to give parcels of land specific coordinates of name and place. The map of each parish was accompanied by what was called a ‘terrier'; a document giving the names of the occupiers of the land in 1642 and also the names of the townlands forming the boundary around the parish. Thus it constitutes a benchmark from which we derive our first reliable glimpse of Ballyhuskard's townlands and boundaries, as well as its area and landowners.

http://downsurvey.tcd.ie/down-survey-maps.php#bm=Ballaghgeene&c=Wexford&indexOfObjectValue=-1&indexOfObjectValueSubstring=-1&p=Ballehaskart

In the Down Survey map of Ballyhuskard parish, two small lots within the townland of Ballynastraw (Designated D on the map) are marked off as church lands. These comprise more than 12 Plantation Acres, the larger of which was a glebe to support the clergyman and the smaller one to accommodate the parish church and graveyard, the subject of this webpage.

All Catholic lands in Ballyhuskard were confiscated but most former owners seem to have stayed on by taking tenancies on their own former properties from the new Protestant owners. This would indicate that considerable continuity of occupants took place.

As time passed, successive elements of civil administration had recourse to the parish maps and terriers of the Down Survey as a basis for policy implementation and thus these parishes, so defined, became known as Civil Parishes. There were about 2500 of them on record in nineteenth century Ireland. Being the Established Church of the State, the Church of Ireland parishes corresponded to the Civil parishes.

DEMISE OF MANY OLD PARISHES
When the Penal Laws began to be revoked in the late eighteenth century the recovering Catholic Church began to reorganise. A new and separate network of Catholic parishes emerged and in the process many old mediaeval Catholic parishes were subsumed into newly created parochial units. With these new arrangements Ballyhuskard Parish passed into history with most of its area becoming part of the newly established parish of Oylegate while a couple of its townlands were transferred to the new parish of Oulart which in turn had replaced the mediaeval parish of Melenagh in like manner.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
All our thanks are due to Maedhbh McNamara, who conceived and mentored this commemorative project. She is a niece of the late Nano Nolan (1918-2010) of Ballinastraw.

The photography of the graveyard and much else besides is the work of Glenbrien native, the noted photographer, Aidan Quirke. Much work was done on the site by local Community Employment Scheme men Philip Keane, Tim Breen and Anthony O'Connor under the direction of Ms Anna May Hodnett, supported by the contribution of Seamus Murphy of Glenbrien from the Ballymurn Community Employment Scheme, directed by Joe Bishop. Michael Dempsey of Wexford County Library was most effective in giving direction to the research. The help of personnel from the National 1798 Centre in Enniscorthy, under Jacqui Hynes and Rory O'Connor is also gratefully acknowledged as is this pen-picture of Ballyhuskard Parish by historian Brian Ó Cléirigh.

Our thanks to the Redmond and Fortune families of Ballynastraw for access to the cemetery. It can be visited by arrangement with both families, who have been very helpful with the recording of the graves and whose generous support is much appreciated.

We also acknowledge the pioneering work of the late Brian Cantwell who collected most of those inscriptions which predated 1880 for his volume of The Dead of County Wexford and the help given to him at the time by Patrick and Nano Nolan, to which he made grateful reference in his report. All three have since passed to their eternal reward.

Go dtuga Dia suaimhneas síoraí don triúr acu agus dóibh uilig a fhanann ar an Aiséirí anseo i Reilig Bhaile Huscaird.