churches historical tyrone

Clonfeacle parish church (1618) located outside the priory gates, is one of the oldest churches in regular use in the province. Basically a hall (the belfry tower was added in 1892), the church has a seventeenth century font and bell and a monument to Captain James Hamilton. Hamilton was one of 3000 Scots killed at the battle of Benburb in 1646. Led by Major General Robert Monroe, the Scots were routed in a disastrous encounter with Owen Roe O'Neill, charismatic nephew of the great Hugh O'Neill....

A monastery had probably been founded on the site some time before 800 by a St. Luran, but the first historical reference to a church here dates from 1195. Fragments of a 13th century successor have been built into the present ruined structure, erected c.1620, at around the time when Allan Cook was founding the town which bears his name. The church is a long, single-cell structure with its east end lit by a window with degenerate but well-preserved (restored) switch-line tracery. There are fou...

The main item of interest is a stone cross having the features of a Celtic cross inscribed on one face of its imperforate ring, while the other face bears a boss. The cross may never have been finished. Built into the interior north wall of the dilapidated medieval church close by is the replica of a medieval effigy of an apparently male figure whose head, made of a different material and now lost, was sunk into its surface; it may have represented the local saint rather than having been a tom...