dunnaman

The megalithic tomb of Dunnaman, a court grave with a long gallery, is at Massforth on the A2 west of Kilkeel, just inside the speed limit, behind St. Colman's Church. An unobtrusive sign on the parochial house indicates the path between clipped hedges. St. Colman's is typical of the huge nineteenth century Paman Catholic churches with acres of adjacent concrete car parking which occupy sites on the edge of towns or out in the country miles from anywhere. Designed by O'Neill and Byrne of Belfast, St Colman's serves the people of Upper Mourne. It needed to big since, when it opened in 1879, it had 5,000 parishioners.

From 1540 until the relaxation of the penal code in the 1770's, the Catholic clergy ministered to their flocks in private houses or out in the open at Mass rocks. Even in the mid nineteenth century there were so few Catholic churches in Ireland that an average congregation was 3,000. The presbyterians and other nonconformists had also been subject to the penal laws though to a lesser extent and they too had few churches.