Drumragh Old Church Traditional Cache

This old cemetery and ruined church is now the only monument of any great antiquity that links the local parish to pre-reformation times. It is said that the church was demolished by Cromwellian troops who fired their cannon from the present-day Cannon hill area of Omagh. Indeed, local farmers are said to have dug up cannon balls while ploughing nearby fields. It is most likely that the present walls of the ruins mark the site or are the old walls of the ancient Catholic Church which was partly rebuilt in the Plantation period for Protestant worship and at this time was Church of Ireland (Anglican). Although the native Irish, in the most part, ceased to bury their dead here after the Plantation, Catholics were allowed the right of burial but only under certain conditions. Thus, the priest was not allowed to wear a surplice and crosses were not permitted to be erected on the grave. In 1902 the Board of Guardians forbade the use of this cemetery but later a section was added for the present congregation.   The Church of Ireland Church was later moved to Church Street in 1777 and although the present building is on the same site Saint Columbas Church was rebuilt in 1871 and remains much the same today apart from a few minor alterations.

A writer from Omagh wrote this about the graveyard:

“The Old Graveyard where the gateway was closed with concrete and stone long before my time, and the dead sealed off forever.  There’s a sort of stile made out of protruding stones in the high wall and within- desolation, a fragment of a church wall that might be medieval, waist-high stagnant grass, table tombstones made anonymous by moss and licheas, a sinister hollow like a huge shellhole in the centre of the place where the dead, also anonymous, of the great famine of the 1840’s were thrown coffinless, one on top of the other.  A man who went to school with me called that the hold of the navel of nothing and to explain in gruesome detail why and hw the earth that once had been mounded had sunk into a hollow…..Impelled by a passion for history, I decided to clean all the table tombstones in old Drumragh and recall the nameless and oblivion the decent people who where buried there.  It was a big project. Not surprisingly it was never completed, never even properly commenced, but it brough us one discovery:  that one of the four people, all priests, buried under a stone that was flat to the ground and circled by giant yews was a MacCathmhaoil (you could English it as Campbell or McCarvill) who Hs in history been known as the Sagart Costarnocht because he went about without boots or socks, and who had in penal days proscribed to catholiscism had said Mass in the Open air at the Mass Rock on Corraduine mountain……..he had read the Mass one Sunday at the rock on Corra Duine and watched, in glory on the summit like the Lord himself, as the congregation trooped in over the mountain from the seven separate parishes”

Written by Benedict Kielly taken from Irish writing in the twentieth century: a reader By David Pierce

Alice Milligan also a writer from Omagh (daughter of Seaton Milligan), who was a prominent Gaelic League during the League s heyday in the early 1900s was buried here in 1953. Her friends included O Donovan Rossa, Douglas Hyde and Roger Casement. She was one of a small group of Protestant Nationalists, which included Parnell, Yeats and Ethna Carbery, and one of the most politically aware Irish women of the early 20th century.  Alice was born into a Methodist household with parents who favoured the union with Britain, however she grew up with a completely different mindset.  Perhaps this controversial standing is one of the reasons that her fame outlasted her fathers. Her father was also a fairly famous writer however I could find little about his writings.

The cache is situated outside the graveyard so there is no need to enter it, but we highly recommend taking a look, but make sure its during the daytime as it is horror movie like!