Aughmacart or Aghmacart Civil Parish, County Laois, Ireland

This place is situated on the confines of the county of Kilkenny, and on the road from Durrow to Johnstown and from Dublin to Cork. A priory of Augustine canons was founded here in 550 by O'Dempsey, under the invocation of St, Tigernarh, which soon afterward became the burial-place of the Fitzpatricks, Princes of Ossory who were its patrons. In the 43rd of Elizabeth it was granted to the descendants of that family, then barons of Upper Ossory, who erected a castle at Culla Hill, which now forms a picturesque ruin: the principle remains are a lofty rectangular tower very much broken, and fragments of various outer walls surrounded by a moat. The parish comprises 9135 statute acres applotted under the tithe act, the lands are in general fertile and in a good state of cultivation; the system of agriculture is much improving; the waste land consists of mountain.

The principal seats are Phillipsboro' the residence of Mrs. Phillips; Belmont, of J. Roe, Esq.; Edmundsbury, of Capt. Thompson; Old Town, of ?? Delany, Esq. ; and Lodgefield, of Lodge Phillips, Esq.

Fairs are held at Culla Hill on May 27th and Oct. 2nd, of which the latter is a large sheep fair.

The living is a vicarage, in the diocese of Ossory, with the vicarages of Cahir and Killeen united episcopally and by act of council, and in the patronage of Ladies G. and F. Fitzpatrick, in whom the rectory is impropriate the tithes of the union amount to £466 13 shillings and 4 pence, of which £300 is payable to the impropriators, and the remainder to the vicar. The church is old but in tolerable repair. There is no glebe-house ; the glebe comprises 29a. lr; 8p.

In the Roman Catholic divisions this parish forms part of the union or district of Durrow; the chapel is at Culla Hill. A Sunday school is supplied with books by the Sunday School Society of Dublin; and there are three pay schools, in which are about 100 boys and 86 girls.

Of the ancient priory, only portions of the chapel walls and of the belfry remain, the latter having an arched doorway of good design. In the vicinity are the remains of an ancient castle, situated in the demesne of the La Touche family, at the foot of a hill on the margin of a spacious lake, and environed with woods; they consist of a large low round tower with walls of great thickness, surmounted with- battlements and turrets, forming a picturesque object in the landscape.

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