Brontë Interpretive Centre and Homeland Drive
About 5 miles outside Rathfriland, off the B10, visitors can visit the Interpretive Centre, comprising a School House and Drumballyroney Church and graveyard. Guided visits can be booked by prior arrangement with the Tourist Office. Patrick Brontë (17 March 1777–7 June 1861), father of the famous Brontë sisters, was employed as a teacher here for 4 years before leaving to study Theology at St. John’s College, Cambridge. After ordination he returned briefly and preached his first sermon here in 1806. In England, he and his wife had 6 children, including Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë. A Homeland Drive by car is signposted and includes the ruins of Patrick’s original home.
Drumballyroney Graveyard was the burial place of the Rathfriland Magennises. Their coronation site was at the nearby hill of Knockiveagh. Also buried here is Sir Arthur Magennis, Viscount Iveagh, who died in 1629, and Squire John Hawkins of Rathfriland in 1689. Patrick Brontë‘s parents and some of his brothers and sisters are buried here although many gravestones are old and illegible.
Knockiveagh
Heading in the direction of Banbridge, Knockiveagh can be found approximately 6 miles outside Rathfriland, off the B10. This scheduled Neolithic hilltop burial cairn is surrounded by significant monuments including a Bronze-age Barrow, an enormous ‘Royal Enclosure’, numerous large forts, and the Ardbrin Bog, the find-site of the Ardbrin horn. It is one of the most complete ‘ritual landscapes’ of Ireland, being used as the inauguration place of the kings of the Ui-Eachach Cobha and later the Magennis Lords of Iveagh. It offers extensive long-range views in all directions, but the site itself is now in private ownership.
St. Colman’s Church, Barnmeen
Located two miles west of Rathfriland, on the Newry Road, this is the oldest Catholic church in use in the diocese of Dromore, built in 1760. The church both inside and out fortunately retains much of the austere, rustic charm of the vernacular Catholic and Presbyterian churches of that era, with stained-glass windows behind the altar by Clokey of Belfast. These depict the Crucifixion scene and were erected by parishioners in 1880 as a memorial to the Barnmeen Martyrs. The inscription (which was previously hidden from view by the old high altar) reads “Sacred to the memory of those called the Barnmeen Martyrs”. In 1820, with sectarianism rife, twelve men were tried in Downpatrick Courthouse for the murder of a Rathfriland man, Samuel Duncan, on 1st. November 1819. Of these twelve, seven were convicted and sentenced to death. Five of them were hanged outside the gates of the old jail in English Street, Downpatrick, and two more had their death sentences commuted to penal servitude for life. The five hanged are buried in the ancient graveyard at Drumgath. On his death, their solicitor Charles Christian, was buried there.
Drumgath Ancient Graveyard
Heading south-west from Rathfriland to Mayobridge on the B7 visitors can see the ecclesiastical site used as an interdenominational graveyard, now in private ownership and listed as a scheduled monument. Legend has it that St Patrick stood on Tamary Hill, near the location of three Bronze Age cairns, throwing his spear to indicate where a church should be built, thus naming the townland Drumgath, the Hill of the Spear.
The site was surveyed in May 2016 by the Ulster Archeological Society, published in Archeology Ireland, Autumn 2016. Data obtained from drone technology aerial photography revealed the outline of a previously unknown and unseen rectangular structure measuring 56.7 m x 17.7 m, aligned east-west. It is likely the remains of an ecclesiastical building including a church dating from the later medieval period, and also the remains of a barrel-shaped mortuary/mausoleum. Evidence of wicker centering in its construction indicates that it may be from the later or post-medieval period. Large moulded stone fragments including window sills, door jambs and parts of window tracery possibly originating from the church building may be seen, along with what may have been a sundial, and numerous headstones and grave markers.
A bronze handbell thought to date from AD 700-900 (Bourke 1980) found here in 1764 by local woman Peggy McGivern, is now on permanent display in the Down Museum.
The cemetery is also the final resting place of the five men known as the Barnmeen martyrs. The last person known to have been buried here was Mrs Eliza Magennis in 1943, great-grandmother of a local family.