Finding the other Lady Fitzgerald who had family roots in Lichfield, who was married three times, and whose life was marked by tragedy

Dam Street, Lichfield, where Lady Fitzgerald’s grandfather Christopher Heveningham was a mercer and draper (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

I was recalling last night (15 May 2026) the social scandal that became a point of gossip in Staffordshire in the mid-18th century when Sir William Wolseley took his supposed second wife Anne Whitby to court in Lichfield seeking a divorce or annulment. The case involved allegations and accusations of greed, manipulation, cheating, forgery, desertion, perjury, bigamy, adultery, bribery, drugged drinks and corrupt and dishonest clergy.

Quite separately, I wrote some time ago (4 June 2020) about Sir James Fitzgerald who lived decades later at Wolseley Hall and in Lichfield and who managed to convincingly persuade people far and wide – and even Burke’s Peerage – that he was the rightful holder of an Irish title of baronet given to a different branch of the Fitzgerald family in Co Limerick.

Fitzgerald’s wife, Augusta Henrietta Fremantle (1803-1863), was known in polite circles as Lady Fitzgerald. They married in 1826 and lived for some years at Maple Hayes Hall near Pipe Hall and Lichfield. When he died in France in 1839, he was described as living at Wolseley Hall, but his widow continued to live at Maple Hayes and in 1841 she was attending Holy Cross Church, Lichfield. She later moved to Castle Ishen, Co Cork, where she died in 1863.

But there was another Lady Fitzgerald, the wife of a real Irish baronet, who also lived in Lichfield in the 19th century, and who had strong connections with Lichfield through her immediate ancestors, her mother and grandparents, her cousins and her grandchildren, and who was a direct descendant of the Comberford family of Comberford Hall.

Margaret (Warner) Fitzgerald was a direct descendant of Margaret Comberford and William Stanley who lived at Comberford Hall 250 years before she was born (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Margaret Warner (1806-1883), who eventually became the other Lady Fitzgerald in Lichfield, was a cousin of a number of prominent clergy in Victorian Lichfield, she was married three times, and the family of her third husband is still remembered in Ireland for the tragedies that befell successive generations, decade after decade, until the family line died out in 1917. Her life is a sad tale that includes drownings, suicide, a child’s death at play, crushing family debts, being widowed three times and her final days lived out in genteel poverty with fading memories of life among minor aristocracy.

This Lady Fitzgerald was born Margaret Warner in 1806, the daughter of Elizabeth Heveningham (1774-1823) from Lichfield and William Warner (1762-1835). They were married in Saint Philip’s Church, Birmingham, now Birmingham Cathedral.

Her mother Elizabeth Heveningham was born in Lichfield on 18 August 1774, the daughter of Charles Heveningham (1737-1782), a mercer and draper of Dam Street, Lichfield. He may have spent part of his childhood at Pipe Hall, the Heveningham ancestral home near Lichfield, and he was a direct descendant of Charles Heveningham (1540-1574) of Pipe Hall and his wife Dorothy Stanley (1530-1587), only daughter of William Stanley of Comberford Hall and Margaret Comberford (1494-1568). I have written last year (23 July 2025) about the Heveningham family and their links with the Comberford family.

Saint Mary’s Church, Lichfield, at night … many members of the Heveningham family were baptised and buried from there (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Charles Heveningham’s first cousin Mary married the Revd Daniel William Remington, Vicar of Saint Michael’s (1757-1772) and of Saint Mary’s (1772-1789), Lichfield, and sub-chanter of Lichfield Cathedral; Elizabeth (Heveningham) Warner was a second cousin of two successive Vicars of Saint Mary’s, the Revd William Remington, who founded the first Sunday school in Lichfield, and the Revd Edward Remington; another second cousin Mary Remington married Thomas White, Procurator of the Ecclesiastical Court in Lichfield and a cousin of the poet Anna Seward, the ‘Swan of Lichfield’.

Elizabeth’s daughter Margaret Warner was married three times, and she was 47 and twice widowed when, on 27 April 1854, she married her third husband, Sir John Judkin-Fitzgerald (1787-1860), an Irish baronet, as his third wife.

Margaret was only 20 – perhaps even younger – when she married her first husband, Robert Jones Parry of Aston-juxta-Birmingham and Hendre, Flintshire. They were the parents of three children, a daughter and two sons:

1, Margaret Parry (1827-1894), who married the Revd Evan Pughe (1807-1869); her son-in-law, Major Philip Halliley Carter (1866-1949) of Birmingham, continued the research into the history of the Heveningham family. Some of her descendants returned to live in the Lichfield area.
2, Robert Jones Parry, who died an infant.
3, (the Revd) William Warner Parry, (born 1832), a naval chaplain whose research into the Heveningham family tree is also an important source.

Margaret Warrners’s second husband was Samuel Banks of Rugeley, but he died soon after their marriage.

The Town Hall in Cashel, Co Tipperary … Margaret Warner’s husband, Sir John Judkin-Fitzgerald, was Mayor of Cashel and High Sheriff of Co Tipperary (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Margaret was twice widowed and was 47 when she married the widowed 67-year-old Irish baronet, Sir John Judkin-Fitzgerald (1787-1860). He was her third husband and she was his third wife. He was the son of Sir Thomas Judkin-FitzGerald (1754-1810) of Cashel, Co Tipperary, who was given the title of baronet in 1801 as a reward for his role in suppressing the United Irish Rebellion of 1798 in Co Tipperary, his support for the Act of Union, and for his time as High Sheriff of Tipperary (1798-1803).

During the 1798 Rising, he became known as ‘Flogging Fitzgerald’, When he died in 1810, an obituary’ referred to his excessive use of the cat o’ nine tails as a magistrate, saying: ‘The history of his life and loyalty is written in legible characters on the backs of his fellow countrymen.’

Margaret’s husband, Sir John Judkin-Fitzgerald, was born on 27 August 1787. He was 23 when he succeeded to his father’s estates in Cashel and his title as the second baronet in 1810. He lived in Golden, near Cashel, and was the Mayor of Cashel and High Sheriff of Co Tipperary (1819-1820).

Sir John married his first wife, the widowed Elizabeth Moore (née Pennefather), in Cashel Cathedral in 1816. They were the parents of one child, Margaret’s future husband, Sir Thomas Judkin-Fitzgerald (1820-1864). Elizabeth died on 26 April 1835, and Sir John married his second wife, Geraldine Fitzgerald, on 10 November 1837. They were the parents of one child, Geraldine Caroline (1839-1916), and this second Lady Fitzgerald died in childbirth on 11 February 1839.

By the time Margaret Warner married Sir John married on 27 April 1854, he was selling off large tracts of land in furtive attempts to clear his mounting debts. The land he sold between 1852 and 1856 included over 3,800 acres in Co Wexford, Co Waterford, Co Tipperary and Co Cork, and he sold another 1,500 acres in Co Cork in 1857. He was living at Golden Hills, near Golden and Cashel, when that too was advertised for sale in 1858, though it remained unsold.

Less than six years after he married Margaret, and now heavily indebted, Sir John was drowned on 28 February 1860. He was onboard the PS Nimrod, an Irish paddle steamer plying between Cork and Liverpool, when it ran aground at St David’s Head in Wales, smashed into three pieces and sank with the loss of 45 lives, 25 crew and 20 passengers. He was 72, Margaret was 52 and now a widow for the third time.

Sir John’s title, his remaining lands and his crushing debts were inherited by his only son, Margaret’s stepson, Sir Thomas Judkin-FitzGerald (1820-1864), as the third baronet. He was a magistrate and a Deputy Lieutenant for Co Tipperary, and continued to live at Golden Hills, which had not yet been sold off.

Three years before succeeding his father, Sir Thomas’s eldest son and heir, nine-year-old John Judkin Judkin-FitzGerald, died in another family tragedy in 1857 when he accidentally hanged himself in the garden. Two stories try to explain what happened: one account says it was an accident while the boy was playing on a swing; the other version says he was showing his younger siblings how their great-grandfather hanged rebels in 1798 when he slipped and accidentally hanged himself.

Sir Thomas Judkin Fitzgerald drowned himself in the River Suir at Golden on the night of 26/27 April 1864 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

But the family tragedies do not end there. Margaret’s stepson, the boy’s father, Sir Thomas Judkin Fitzgerald, drowned himself in the River Suir at Golden on the night of 26/27 April 1864 when he was only 43.

A letter in the Clonmel Chronicle said reports that he was living in ‘greatly embarrassed circumstances’ and ‘greatly in debt’ were ‘much exaggerated’. But he was living with financial difficulties, finding he was liable for the debts of his father, Sir John Judkin Fitzgerald, totalling £7,000, or about £1.1 million today. Sir Thomas had insured his life for several thousand pounds so his family might not suffer from ever-mounting debts.

The jury reached a verdict of death as a result of temporary insanity. But local people tried to stop him being buried in consecrated ground in Ballygriffin churchyard because of his suicide. On the day of his funeral they packed the graveyard in Ballygriffin, filled the fresh-dug grave with stones, and blocked the priest from continuing with the burial. When he was buried eventually, his funeral was guarded by a large police presence.

By then, his step-mother, Margaret (Warner) Fitzgerald, now a widow for the third time, had moved to Moss Side, Manchester, with her son William Warner Parry and her step-daughter Geraldine Fitzgerald. Geraldine married Dr Walter Bourne in 1870 and they lived in Calcutta and later in Bradford. The Revd William Warner Parry, studied at Oxford, became a naval chaplain, and his research into the Heveningham family tree has been an important source.

Margaret died in genteel poverty in Southsea on 8 September 1883 at the age of 77. By then, her step-grandson, Sir Joseph Capel Judkin-FitzGerald (1853-1917), had succeeded to the Fitzgerald title as the fourth baronet as an eight-year-old in 1864. Golden Hills was advertised for sale again in 1878, when it was described as a ‘large castellated building’ with a drawing room opening into a conservatory, dining room and morning room, eight bedrooms and a servants’ hall. Most of the house had disappeared by the early 1940s, or was incorporated into a modern farmyard.

Sir Joseph Capel Judkin-Fitzgerald was the last and final baronet in his family. He lived a sad and dissolute life in England, accused of stealing jewellery, defrauding gullible divorcees, defaulting on loans and debts, leaving unpaid hotel and restaurant bills in London and Paris, and working as an unlicensed cab driver. He was threatened with imprisonment and was eventually declared bankrupt. He outlived his two sons, and when he died in 1917 his family title of baronet died out.

Saint Michael’s Church, Greenhill, Lichfield … many members of the Heveningham family are buried in the churchyard (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Meanwhile, some of Margaret Warner’s descendants through her first marriage to Robert Jones Parry would return to live in Lichfield and some of them had interesting roles in Church and academic life.

In 1847, her daughter Margaret Parry (1827-1894) married the Revd Evan Pughe (1807-1869), Vicar of Bangor, and later Rector of Llantrisant. Their large family included: Margaret Constance Pughe (1862-1930), whose family returned to live in Lichfield; and Alice Gertrude Pughe (1869-1892), whose husband Major Philip Halliley Carter (1866-1949) of Birmingham, continued the research into the Heveningham family history.

Margaret Constance Pughe (1862-1930) married the Very Revd Charles Walter Carrington (1859-1941) in Cambridge in 1890. He became the mission chaplain to the Bishop of Lichfield, and some of their children were born in Lichfield before the family moved to West Bromwich and then to New Zealand, where he was the Dean of Christchurch.

Margaret and Charles Carrington were the parents of a large family, including Philip Carrington (1892-1975), who was born in Lichfield and became Bishop of Quebec (1935-1960) and Metropolitan of Canada (1944-1960). Another son, the historian Charles Edmund Carrington (1897-1990), was Professor of History at Cambridge and the biographer of Rudyard Kipling and Graham Greene.

According to Margaret’s great-grandson, CE Carrington, writing in 1966, Lady Fitzgerald had ‘brought up her family to believe that they were the last survivors of one of the most ancient families in England, the Heveninghams of Heveningham, from whom she had inherited some old documents and a great deal of family pride.’

The two women known as Lady Fitzgerald had strong family links with Lichfield in the 19th century and both married Irish baronets. I sometimes wonder whether their paths ever crossed either in Lichfield or in Ireland, whether they knew each other, and whether they were ever confused with one another.

Most of the remains of the Fitzgerald estate in Golden, near Cashel, Co Tipperary, have had disappeared by the early 1940s and are difficult to find (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Sources and references include:

The Visitations of Staffordshire and Warwickshire.
Michael Greenslade, Catholic Staffordshire 1500-1850 (Gracewing, 2006).

The Heveningham family tree on Geni (last accessed 21 July 2025).
‘The Heveningham Family of Staffordshire’ (last accessed 21 July 2025).
The St. Leger-May Family Home Page (last accessed 15 May 2026).
‘Townships: Wall with Pipehill’, in A History of the County of Stafford: Volume 14, Lichfield, ed MW Greenslade (London, 1990), pp 283-294. British History Online http://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/staffs/vol14/pp283-294 (last accessed 21 July 2025).
‘Burntwood: Manors, local government and public services’, in A History of the County of Stafford: Volume 14, Lichfield, ed MW Greenslade (London, 1990), British History Online https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/staffs/vol14/pp205-220 (last accessed 21 July 2025).
Aleyn Lyell Reade, Johnsonian Gleanings, ‘Notes on Dr Johnson’s Ancestors and Connexions’, pp 1-41 (London: 1909).

Saint Edmund, the English king and martyr who almost replaced Saint Patrick as the patron saint of Ireland

Saint Edmund depicted in a window in Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

Saint Patrick’s Day always falls in Lent, and this year it coincides with the Fifth Sunday in Lent, which used to be known in the Church Calendar as Passion Sunday, marking the beginning of the two-week period of Passiontide before Easter Day.

To mark Saint Patrick’s Day this year, the latest edition of the new Dominican journal Conversations, edited by Bernard Treacy, has published a paper by me, asking: ‘Did St Patrick Bring Christianity to Ireland?’

Throughout Lent this year, in my prayer diary on my blog each morning, I am looking at the life and influence of an early, pre-Reformation English saint or martyr commemorated in the Church of England in the calendar of Common Worship.

This morning, I was reflecting on Saint Edmund, the ninth century king, who was martyred in 869 or 870 and who is commemorated Common Worship on 20 November. As I was researching his life and story, I came across the fascinating claim that Saint Edmund almost supplanted Saint Patrick as the patron saint of Ireland in the 14th century.

Perhaps, after England’s defeat of Ireland at Twickenham yesterday, I dare not suggest that Saint Patrick was probably what we would today call an Englishman. Of course, that is a form of an anchronism, as the Angles had not yet arrived in former Roman Britain by the time of Saint Patric. But the story of another English saint, Saint Edmund, and how he almost replaced Saint Patrick as the patron of Ireland, has been told recently by Dr Francis Young in his book Athassel Priory and the Cult of St Edmund in Medieval Ireland (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2020), and in a feature that year in History Ireland, ‘St Edmund: Patron Saint of Ireland?’

Saint Edmund was the Anglo-Saxon king of East Anglia when he was shot through with arrows and finally beheaded by Viking invaders. His shrine at Beodricesworth, the Suffolk town that later became Bury St Edmunds, was an important centre of pilgrimage throughout the Middle Ages. By the end of the 11th century, Saint Edmund was seen throughout Europe as the patron saint of England and his shrine church at Bury St Edmunds was of the largest Romanesque churches ever built. He became the patron saint of pandemics as well as kings, and he remained the patron saint of England until he was supplanted by Saint George.

At an early stage, Saint Edmund also became a popular saint in Ireland. A hoard of coins minted by 10th-century Vikings in memory of Saint Edmund within a century of his death, was found in Co Offaly in the 19th century. It seems Saint Edmund was also popular in Norse Dublin by the early 11th century, and he is named in the 12th century Irish text, the Félire Húi Gormán or Martyrology of Gorman.

Following the Anglo-Norman invasion of Ireland in 1169-1170, a chapel was dedicated to Saint Edmund in Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin. Francis Young wonders whether devotion to Saint Edmund was been brought back to Ireland by knights who fought under the banner of Saint Edmund to save the abbey of Bury St Edmunds in 1173. Or, he suggests, there is the possibility that the chapel was partly funded by English merchants from East Anglia, as merchants from Chester had paid for Saint Werburgh’s Church in Dublin.

Saint Edmund depicted in a window in Saint Mary’s Church in Whitby, Yorkshire (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)

Francis Young is a writer historian who was born in Bury St Edmunds. He studied Philosophy at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, and Classics at the University of Wales, Lampeter, before receiving his doctorate in History from Cambridge University. He points out that the early leading Anglo-Normans in Ireland included William de Burgh (died 1206), who took his name from the village of Burgh-next-Aylsham in Norfolk, and who was ancestor of the powerful Burke or Bourke family. Young argues that William de Burgh’s devotion to Saint Edmund is explained by his origins in East Anglia. William founded two significant churches dedicated to Saint Edmund – one at Ardoyne, Co Carlow, and the other at Athassel Priory, near Golden, Co Tipperary.

Athassel Priory became the largest mediaeval priory in Ireland and for 300 years it was the centre of the veneration of Saint Edmund in Ireland for the next 300 years. Saint Edmund’s status as the patron of England gave Athassel a special status for the English of Ireland.

At the beginning of the reign of Richard II (1377-1399), a monk of Bury St Edmunds claimed that Athassel Priory held a miraculous image of Saint Edmund. The story claimed that immediately before the death of the head of the Burke family of Clanwilliam, the image of Saint Edmund would hurl the spear it was holding onto the pavement of the choir. The monk named Saint Edmund as the patron saint of Ireland, describing him as ‘the protector and defender of that whole land.’

The claim that Saint Edmund was the patron saint of Ireland could easily be dismissed as the ramblings of an English monk, Young writes. But, he points, nine years later, when Richard II gave the title ‘Duke of Ireland’ to Robert de Vere, Earl of Oxford, in 1386, he also gave him the right to quarter his coat of arms with the arms of Saint Edmund (three gold crowns on a blue background) – for as long as he remained Lord of Ireland.

The three crowns of Saint Edmund were used as an emblem of English royalty from as early as 1276, and, from 1460, the three crowns of Saint Edmund appeared on coins minted in Dublin in the name of the king. However, Saint Edmund’s significance in England had been declining steadily from the mid-14th century, and by the 15th century Saint George was well established as the patron saint of the Order of the Garter and of England’s military.

Under the Tudors, Saint George became the sole patron of England and Saint Edmund lost his popular appeal. When Henry VIII declared himself King of Ireland in 1542, the three crowns of Saint Edmund disappeared from Irish coins, replaced by the harp. By then, it appears, the original meaning of the three crowns was forgotten, and Henry VIII’s officials thought they represented the triple tiara of the pope and the papacy’s long-standing claim to Ireland as a papal fief.

Young sees lingering traces of the mediaeval importance of the cult of Saint Edmund in the flag of Munster, with three gold crowns on a blue background. The flag is first recorded in the 17th century, but Young tries to link it with the Butler family, Earls of Ormond, who had replaced the Burkes as patrons of Athassel Priory in the early 16th century.

He sees a further trace of the once-prominent cult of Saint Edmund in Ireland in the persistence of the name Edmund and its Irish equivalent Éamon, popular in Ireland since the 14th century. Éamon was one of the few male names of English origin to gain widespread popularity in Gaelic Ireland in the Middle Ages. The earliest individuals to bear the name in Ireland were members of the Burke or Bourke and Butler families, successive patrons of Athassel Priory. The earliest Gaelic Irish families to adopt Éamon as a forename were the septs of Ó Broin (O’Byrne) and Ó Cinnéide (O’Kennedy), clients of the Butlers of Ormond.

The name Edmund or Edmond is first found in the Comerford family, thanks perhaps to close connections with the Butlers of Ormond, in the person of Edmund Comerford from Co Kilkenny, who died in 1509. He was educated at Oxford, and was Rector of Saint Mary’s, Callan, Prior of Saint John’s, Kilkenny, a canon and then Dean of Saint Canice’s Cathedral, Kilkenny, and Bishop of Ferns (1505-1509). Although Hore, Leslie, Foster and Gillespie incorrectly give his name as ‘Edward,’ although he is named Edmund in Cotton, Carrigan and Crockford’s, and is called both Edmond and Edmund by Grattan-Flood.

Edmund’s brother, Richard Comerford, was the direct ancestor of the Comerford families of Ballybur and Bunclody, and the name Edmund continued to be passed down in the Comerford family through Edmund Comerford (1722-1788), until my father’s generation: the eldest brother he never knew was Edmond Joseph Comerford (1900-1905).

Saint Edmund’s connection with Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin, continues. A stained glass window by Clayton and Bell in the Baptistry depicting Saint Edmund was presented by the architect George Edmund Street (1824-1881) in memory of his second wife Jessie (1843-1876). They were married on 11 January 1876, but she contracted typhoid fever during their honeymoon in Rome and died on 6 March 1876, eight weeks after their wedding.

However, Saint Edmund’s brief time as patron saint of Ireland in the late Middle Ages was long forgotten until Francis Young published his research in recent years.

Further Reading:

Anthony Bale (ed), St Edmund, King and Martyr: Changing Images of a Medieval Saint (York Medieval Press, 2009).
Francis Young, Edmund: in search of England’s lost king (London: IB Taurus, 2018).
Francis Young, Athassel Priory and the cult of St Edmund in medieval Ireland (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2020).
Francis Young, ‘St Edmund: patron saint of Ireland?’, History Ireland (July/August 2020), Vol 28 No 4.

The Chapel of Saint Edmund in Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Last edited: 14 March 2024

I missed Comerford’s Lot the first time round, but then found it by accident

On the banks of the River Suir at Comerford’s Lot in Golden, Co Tipperary (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018; click on image for full-screen view)

Patrick Comerford

Quite naturally my interest in Comerford family history means I take an interest not only in the genealogical details of different branches of the Comerford family, but I am interested too in places and shopfronts that bear the Comerford name.

Apart from the two places that provide separate origins for families with this name – Comberford, between Lichfield and Tamworth in Staffordshire, and Quemerford, near Calne in Wiltshire – these names crop in many places across these islands.

I have found myself photographing pubs and shop front with the name Comerford in different towns and villages, including James Comerford’s pub in Mooncoin, Co Kilkenny, the former Comerford shopfront in Barrack Street, Castlecomer, Co Kilkenny, Comerford’s drapery on the Main Street in Rathdrum, Co Wicklow, and Comerford’s Pub in Doonbeg, Co Clare.

There is Comerford Road in London SE4 is off Brockley Road in the Borough of Lewisham, Quemerford Road in Islington, London N7, and Comerford Way in Winslow in Buckinghamshire. In addition, there is Comberford Road in Tamworth, Comberford Lane between Comberford and Wigginton, Comberford Drive is in Wednesbury, Cumberford Avenue in Birmingham and Cumberford Close and Cumberford Hill in Bloxham, near Banbury, Oxfordshire.

I was aware too of Comerford’s Lot in Co Tipperary, but when I visited Golden, near Cashel, a few months ago, I missed Comerford’s Lot. There were no road signs to tell me where it was, no name plates or plaques telling me where I could find the place.

It was only during an idle moment at the weekend that I noticed I had actually been to Comerford’s Lot and stood on the ground there as I was taking photographs on the banks of the River Suir.

When my photographs are moved to Google Photos and stored in the Cloud, Google not only tracks when these photographs have been taken, but actually specifies where they have been taken, right down to the detail of the townland where I have been standing.

Comerford’s Lot is in the Electoral Division of Golden in Co Tipperary

To be precise, Comerford’s Lot is in the Electoral Division of Golden, in the Civil Parish of Relickmurry and Athassel, in the Barony of Clanwilliam, in Co Tipperary. Other townlands in the parish with similar names include Hoop’s Lot, Sergeant’s Lot and Persse’s Lot.

Among the places I was photographing from Comerford’s Lot was a seven-bay, multiple-storey mill, built ca 1820. It stands close to the banks of the River Suir and was once part of a large mill complex that was powered by the river.

The mill has a hipped slate roof, roughcast rendered walls and square-headed window openings with timber louvres. Although no longer in use, the mill retains its form and structure and is a reminder of the industrial past of Golden.

The seven bay, 200-year-old mill, photographed in Comerford’s Lot at Golden, Co Tipperary (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

While I was in Comerford’s Lot, I also photographed the splendid 12-arch road bridge over the fork of the River Suir, fist built ca 1500 and rebuilt around 1770. This long bridge stands at an important crossing point of the River Suir, in the centre of the mediaeval settlement at Golden.

Golden takes its name from the Irish An Gabhailín, referring to the fork in the River Suir. The bridge at Golden straddles an island in the River Suir at Comerford’s Lot, and in the past this village was also known as Goldenbridge.

The 12-arch bridge in Golden spans the River Suir and Comerford’s Lot (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

The bridge is a prominent landmark in Golden and spans two channels of the River Suir in a curve of graceful arches. It is a technical, architectural and engineering achievement and its considerable age makes it one of the more important bridges in Co Tipperary.

The ruined tower house on the bridge recalls its strategic function in the past. This is a rare, round-plan tower house built by the Butlers of Ormond to defend the river crossing and to protect river traffic. The castle is said to have sheltered 120 men, women and children for 11 weeks during the 1641 rebellion. A well close to the castle is known as Cromwell’s Well.

The bridge also displays a bronze portrait of Thomas McDonagh (1878-1916). However, this Tipperary-born poet seems to have had no connections with Golden.

The tower and bridge are now set within a park that is partly in Comerford’s Lot. This park surrounds the bridge area and offers picturesque views of the River Suir.

The castle ruins and bridge at Comerford’s Lot in Golden, Co Tipperary (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

Golden, in the heart of the ‘Golden Vale’ in Co Tipperary, is about 6 km south-west of Cashel and is made up of two mediaeval parishes, Relickmurry or Religmurry and Athassel, in the Barony of Clanwilliam.

An Augustinian Priory was founded in Athassel in the late 12th century by William Fitz Aldelm de Burgho, for the Canons Regular of the Order of Saint Augustine, and was dedicated to Saint Edmund King and Martyr.

The priory was so rich and so powerful that the Abbot of Athassel sat in the Irish parliament with the bishops as one of the spiritual peers. After the priory was dissolved at the Reformation, the priory and its estates were granted to Thomas Butler, Earl of Ormond.

Golden’s most famous person was Father Theobald Mathew (1790-1856), the ‘Apostle of Temperance,’ who was born nearby at Thomastown Castle, the home of the Mathew family, Earls of Llandaff.

Thomastown Castle, now in ruins, was first built in the 17th century by George Mathew, half-brother of James Butler, the 1st Duke of Ormond. It was dramatically altered and enlarged in neo-Gothic style around 1812 with new wings and four slender towers designed by Richard Morrison (1767-1849).

When Edward Comerford was Archbishop of Cashel (1695-1710), he survived as the parish priest of Thurles under the protection of the Mathew family, and lived at Annfield, the home of Toby Mathew.

At the time of Griffith’s Valuation, nobody recorded as living within the townland of Comerford’s Lot. But the name of Comerford’s Lot in Golden may predate those links with the Mathew family, and may date to some grant of land from the Ormond Butlers to the Comerford family.

Obviously, I need to do some more research to discover the origins of Comerford’s Lot.

Comerford’s Lot is a townland in Golden … similar names for neighbouring townlands include Hoop’s Lot, Sergeant’s Lot and Persse’s Lot

Finding castle ruins by the banks of the River Suir in Golden

On the banks of the River Suir below the ruins of Golden Castle in Co Tipperary (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018; click on image for full-screen view)

Patrick Comerford

On the journey from west Limerick to Dublin yesterday, I stopped in Golden, a village on the banks of the River Suir and between the towns of Tipperary and Cashel in Co Tipperary.

The valley of the River Suir is fertile agricultural land and is part of an area known as ‘the Golden Vale.’ But the name of Golden comes from the Irish An Gabhailín, referring to a fork in the River Suir. The bridge at Golden straddles an island in the River Suir, and in the past, this village was also known as Goldenbridge.

The road from Cashel in Co Tipperary to the coast at Ardmore, Co Waterford, passes through Golden and was a route taken in the past by many key figures, from Saint Patrick to King Henry II.

The River Suir, said to be the second longest river in Ireland, brought early settlers, the Vikings and the Normans, deep into the rich farmland of the Golden Vale.

The Annals of the Four Masters refers to the Battle of Maol Ceannaigh on the hill overlooking Golden to the north-east in 1043. In that battle, Carthach, ancestor of the MacCarthys, defeated the forces of Ossory and Ormond.

The ruins of Golden Castle by the banks of the River Suir in Co Tipperary (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018; click on image for full-screen view)

The mediaeval castle at Golden is now in a ruinous state, and all that remains of it is a mediaeval tower that stands on an island beside the bridge crossing the River Suir.

Golden Castle was built in the late 15th century by the Butlers of Ormond to defend the river crossing and to protect river traffic. The castle is said to have sheltered 120 men, women and children for 11 weeks during the 1641 rebellion. A well close to the castle is known as Cromwell’s Well.

The army of William III (William of Orange) camped to the north-east of Golden on their way to lay siege to Limerick in 1690. While he was at Golden, King William renewed by letter, in his own hand, the Royal Charter of Cashel in gratitude to the people of Cashel for the hospitality his followers received.

Golden’s most famous person was Father Theobald Mathew (1790-1856), who was born nearby at Thomastown Castle, the home of the Mathew family, Earls of Llandaff. Father Mathew was known as the ‘Apostle of Temperance.’

There are many castle ruins and castellated sites around Golden (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

There are other castle ruins and sites around Golden. Castlepark House, near the entrance to Golden, was the seat of the Alleyn family in 1786. By the early 19th century it was the home of the Creagh family. Richard Creagh was living there in 1814 and 1837, and Lawrence Creagh held the property from Kingsmill Pennefather at the time of Griffith's Valuation.

It was later bought by the Scully family, when it became known as Mantle Hill. The house is no longer standing.

Goldenville near Golden was the residence of Thomas Judkin Fitzgerald, High Sheriff of Co Tipperary in 1798 and known as ‘Flogging Fitzgerald.’

When he died in 1810, an obituary described his excessive use of the cat o’ nine tails 1798, and said, ‘The history of his life and loyalty is written in legible characters on the backs of his fellow countrymen.’

The White family lived at Goldenville for a time, and in 1837, Lewis describes Golden Hills as the ‘castellated residence of H[enry] White.’

By 1858, Sir Thomas Judkin Fitzgerald (1820-1864), 3rd Baronet, was living at Golden Hills or Golden Lodge, near Golden. He was facing financial problems when he drowned himself in the River Suir on the night of 26 and 27 April 1878. It was reported later that he died from ‘temporary insanity.’

Golden Hills was advertised for sale in 1878, when it was described as a ‘large castellated building’ with a drawing room opening into a conservatory, dining room and morning room, eight bedrooms and a servants’ hall.

Most of the house had disappeared by the early 1940s, or was incorporated into a modern farmyard.

The tower of Golden Castle is now as part of a park that surrounds the bridge area and offers picturesque views of the River Suir.

A memorial in the castle ruins commemorates Thomas MacDonagh (1878-1916), a Tipperary-born poet and one of the leaders of the Easter Rising in 1916. But while one of his collections of poetry was published as The Golden Joy (1910), he seems to have had no connections with Golden.

I must return to Golden to see the ruins of the Augustinian Priory at Athassel, 2 km south of the village. The abbey was founded by William FitzAdelm de Burgo in the last decades of the 12th century. It was once the largest abbey in Ireland and was surrounded by Athassel, a small town that was burned twice, in 1319 by Lord Maurice Fitzthomas and in 1419 by Bryan O’Brien.

The castle ruins and bridge on the River Suir in Golden (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)