What is recorded here

Fennerstown, also called Ballyfennor and Ballyfinnan, is the forgotten name of Newtown itself, and it gave its identity to a small parish absorbed by St. Canice’s Cathedral around 1510. Its church and graveyard vanished without a visible mark, yet local memory still points to the Old Gardens as the place where the dead once lay. The town may have grown over its own beginning, turning an old sacred field into ordinary ground while preserving only the shape of what was lost.

According to Carrigan (1905, vol. 3, 201), ‘In former times the name Fennerstown, also written Ballyfennor and Ballyfinnan, extended to Newtown proper, that is the New Town of Fennerstown, and thus denoted nearly all the present townland of Newtown. Some centuries ago Ballyfinnan gave name to a small parish, impropriate in the Dean and Chapter of St. Canice’s Cathedral, about the year 1510, and long since merged in the civil parish of St. Canice’s. Its parish church appears in the Red Book of Ossory as the “Ecclesia de Ballyfynoun,” or Church of Ballyfinnan. No trace of this church remains; but it must have stood in Mr. Michael Madden’s land in Newtown proper, in a field called the Old Gardens, to which tradition still points as the site of a long obliterated “Churchyard.”. The precise location of this church (KK019-069002-) and graveyard within Newtown townland is unknown. Compiled by: Jean Farrelly Date of upload: 13 October 2020

The monument record does not grant public access. Check the route and ask the landowner before entering private land.