House of Davnet

Situated at the crest of the S-facing slope of a small hill. Traditionally regarded as a seventh-century foundation associated with St. Dympna or Damhnad, of whom little is known except that in one of her genealogies she is reputed to be a granddaughter of Míleac, St Patrick’s master during his enslavement. She was commemorated on 13 June at Tydavnet and has sometimes been confused with St Dimpna, who is celebrated at Gheel in Belgium on 15 May (Ó Riain 2011, 256-7). The metal shrine of a crozier known as bachall Damhnaid – Damhnad’s staff – was preserved locally until 1835, and it now in Royal Irish Academy collection at the National Museum of Ireland (O’Daly 1959).

This is the site of the medieval parish church of Tedavnet, of which Damhnad was the patroness. It is listed as Thechdamnad - Dympna’s house – in the ecclesiastical taxation (1302-06) of Pope Nicholas IV (Shirley 1879, 289). The names of some of the clergy are known from 1422, and in 1622 the church was described as ‘ruinous’ (Leslie 1929, 254-7). By order of Council in 1754 the parochial centre was moved to Mullaghmore West where St Davnet’s Church of Ireland church is still functioning, while the church site in Mullanrackan continued as a subrectangular graveyard (dims c. 60m NW-SE; c. 40m NE-SW) defined by masonry walls. (McKenna 1920, 1, 313-46)

A small portion of a wall (L 2.15m; T 0.45m; max. H 1.95m) is said to belong to the medieval church but it is more likely to have been erected to display the funerary monument of Richard Robinson dated 1715. The graveslab (dims 2.04m x 1m; T 0.1-0.15m) of John Foster dated 1677 with prominent symbols of mortality (McCormick 1983) is c. 4m to the N of this wall and a cup-marked stone that is set up as a headstone (dims 0.8m x 0.1m; max. H 0.7m) with three cup-marks on its E face is c. 5m to the W. Archaeological testing (06E0640) immediately to the south-east of the graveyard uncovered human bone fragments which were redeposited from the graveyard, and two millstones (Duffy, C. 2009, 446; Duffy, C. 2010, 393). A portion of the graveyard wall (L c. 9m) at SE collapsed in 2011 but this was repaired by Monaghan County Council.