The ruins of Bonamargy Friary and the surrounding cemetery are situated a short distance to the east of the town of Ballycastle on the north Antrim coast. According to O’Laverty, the name of the friary, Bun na Mairge, meaning the foot of the Margy, comes from its geographical location close to where the River Margy, a very short river formed by the confluence of the Cary and Shesk rivers, enters the sea. Local historian, Cahal Dallat, suggests an alternative meaning, Bun na Mairgeadh, the foot of the market, which refers to its location in relation to the famous Ballycastle fair or market.
The history of the friary is poorly documented and it is therefore impossible to provide an accurate account of its construction or its use as a religious institution. Most historical sources contain the names of two possible founders of the friary and differing dates of building. Rory McQuillan, chieftain of the Route, an area in north Antrim, is said to have been responsible for the building of Bonamargy at some time between 1485, according to Dallat, and 1509 according to Charles Brett. The friary is named in a manuscript, held in the British Museum, which states that it was founded in 1500 by McQuillan. An alternative popular local tradition, cited in several historical sources, suggests that the friary was founded by Phelimy or Felix McCormick, a local chieftain from Glenshesk, to atone for his brutal murder of a neighbour in a local dispute.
The friary was extensively damaged in 1584 in one of the many military campaigns in the area in the sixteenth century. Lord Deputy Perrot’s soldiers occupied and fortified the buildings and stabled their horses there. Local forces, under Sorley Boy McDonnell, burnt much of the friary during an attack on those English soldiers. It was repaired and then reoccupied by the Franciscans until they were banished about 1642 although it may have been used after that date by friars working in Scotland.
Fagan reported, in 1839, in the Ordnance Survey memoir for Culfeightrin Parish, that the friary was then in ruins and surrounded by a graveyard. This had been greatly enlarged in area when a new wall was erected enclosing new ground about 1808. According to local information, there had been few burials on the north and west sides of the buildings prior to 1810 but within thirty years that area was thickly studded with graves. William Reeves stated in 1847 that the graveyard was the principal burial ground for Culfeightrin parish, in which it is situated, but it is obvious from the information on headstones that many people from the adjoining parish of Ramoan were also buried there.
The vast majority of the headstones record the deaths of people in the nineteenth century. Few headstones were erected in or have survived from the less populous eighteenth century and the number of interments declined towards the end of the nineteenth century as burial grounds were opened in churchyards surrounding the new churches built by the main denominations. The cemetery has been closed to burials for most of the twentieth century and only a few families with burial rights used it during that time.
The earliest recorded use of the friary for burials was by the MacDonnell family. This family was part of the Clan Donald and could trace its ancestry back to Somerled, Lord of Argyll, in the twelfth century. The family chieftains were Lords of Islay and Kintyre situated not far from north-east Antrim on the other side of the narrow sea now called the North Channel. They became involved in the north-east Antrim area when their leader, John Mor MacDonnell, married Margery Bissett, daughter of Eoin Bissett, the Lord of the Glynns, in the 1390s.
James IV of Scotland absorbed the Lordship of the Isles into his kingdom in the late fifteenth century but the MacDonnells continued to resist in their remote area. However when their leader, Sir John Cahanagh, was seized and hanged in 1497 his immediate family and other MacDonnells and many of their kin-related septs, among them MacAllisters, MacKays and MacNeills, took refuge in the Glens of Antrim.
Throughout the sixteenth century the family made a series of judicious marriages with leading families in the Glens and alliances with major Gaelic chieftains in Ulster. They defeated the McQuillans, the Lords of the Route, at the bloody Battle of Orra in 1559 and took possession of their estate and castles. Despite the hostility of the English administration in Dublin and the O’Neills of Tyrone and some bloody defeats, Sorley Boy O’Donnell, Sir John’s famous grandson, preserved the family’s gains through the frequent Irish Wars during Elizabeth I’s reign by a combination of astute diplomacy, ruthlessness and savage fighting.
Sorley Boy was succeeded by his younger son, Randal Sorley MacDonnell. Despite having fought with O’Neill, Earl of Tyrone, against the English forces at Kinsale in 1601, Randal managed to hold on to the large family estates in the Glens and the Route by helping King James defeat a rebellious clan and inviting lowland Scots to settle in the Route. He was created Viscount Dunluce in 1618 and first Earl of Antrim in 1620. Randal selected Bonamargy Friary for the burial place of the MacDonnell chieftains.
An inscription dated 1621 on a plaque on the south gable wall read, according to O’Laverty, ‘In Dei, Dei-Matrisque honorem Nobillissimus atque Illustrissimus Randulphus McDonnell Comes de Antrim Hoc Sacellum fieri curavit 1621’. It would seem that the original vault and perhaps a chapel above it were added to the friary in 1621 and both were extended around the mid 1660s. Fagan recorded that local people believed the oratory or chapel above the vault had been erected, later than the other buildings, by the Antrim family.
The vault contains the coffins of four earls – Randal, 2nd Earl (died 1682), Alexander, 5th Earl (died 1775), Randal, 6th Earl (died 1791) and Hugh Seymour, 7th Earl (died 1855) – and two of their countesses. In 1894 it was suggested, in the Memorials of the Dead, vol. 2, no. 3, that there was every reason to believe that the chapel contained the remains of the 1st Earl and, also perhaps, his father, Sorley Boy. More recently, it was suggested that the remains of Sorley, who had been buried in the original graveyard on the south side of the friary, may have been exhumed after the vault was built and that it is his remains which are contained in a lead box in the vault. It is thus possible that Sorley Boy’s remains were the first to be placed in the vault. The other burial place of the family is at Glenarm which became the seat of the family in the mid eighteenth century after Dunluce Castle was abandoned in the late seventeenth century and nearby Ballymagarry was burned in 1750.
Alexander, 3rd Earl, younger son of the 1st Earl, who had fought at Kinsale, put the family estates and titles at risk by espousing the cause of James II and VII. He was attainted of high treason but was subsequently included in the amnesty in the Treaty of Limerick and his land and titles were restored before his death in 1699. His grandson, Alexander, 5th Earl, who had assumed the title, aged 8, on the death of his father in 1721, conformed to the Church of Ireland in 1733 and took his seat in the House of Lords.
Close to the entrance to the O’Donnell vault there is a monument to the founder of the Irish McNaughten family. The inscription reads: ‘Heire lyeth the bodie of Ihn McNachton sectarie to Randal, First Erle of Antrim, who departed this mortalitie in the year of Our Lord 1630’.
The Clan MacNaghten traced their descent from the leaders of the Picts in Scotland. The family was granted a large area of Strath Tay in the twelfth century and the chieftains were styled Thanes of Tay. Sir Alexander McNaghten died at Flodden Field along with his Monarch and ‘the flower of Scottish nobility’ in 1513. His eldest son, whose name is not known, married Anne McLean, a granddaughter of Sorley Boy MacDonnell and therefore a niece of Randal MacDonnell, the first Earl of Antrim.
Anne’s eldest son died without issue and the second son, Malcolm, inherited the family title and property in Scotland. Her third son, Shane Dhu [Black John], came to Antrim in 1580 where he worked as secretary to his great uncle for 50 years. There is no extant record of a lease of land from the Antrim estate to Black John. It is possible that the land, at Benvarden, near Dervock, leased by the second Earl in 1637 to Daniel, Black John’s son, may have been a renewal of an existing lease. Later leases established the McNaghten family at Beardiville, near Coleraine and a descendent acquired Dunderave, near Bushmills, by marriage to a cousin. Dunderave was named after the final McNaghten family home in Scotland.
The clan chieftain in Scotland remained loyal to the Stuart King James II and VII and fought with Bonny Dundee against Prince William of Orange at the battle of Killiecrankie in 1689 and as a result his property and title were forfeited. It was not until 1818 that the then senior member of the Irish family was persuaded to accept the clan leadership and it eventually passed in 1832 to Sir Francis Workman McNaghten of Runkerry House.
There are ten other headstones located along the interior walls of the ruined church building but there is no evidence to confirm the actual location of burials of those named on the inscriptions. However, although the inscription has long since disappeared, there is historical evidence for at least a number of burials, under a large slab of sandstone, at the east end of the church close to where the high altar was situated. It was here, according to O’Laverty, that Captain Stewart of Dundermod [in Clough parish] and his family and Dr. Francis Stewart, Franciscan and Catholic Bishop of Down and Connor 1740-1750, were buried.
One of the most interesting monuments in the cemetery is the circular primitive cross at the west end of the church which is traditionally believed to be the burial place of the locally celebrated Julia McQuillan, the Black Nun of Bonamargy. Local tradition recorded in the nineteenth century suggests that she belonged to the same family as the founder of the friary. Julia lived as a recluse for many years in a small house unattached to the main buildings after the departure of the friars in mid seventeenth century. Before her death, which took place in that century, she requested, as a sign of humility, burial at the west doorway so all who entered would walk on her grave and that after burial her coffin would be used for the burial of the next poor person who died. Local tradition also suggests that her sister lived with her for a period of time as did an out of favour Countess of Antrim. Nineteenth-century and much more recent sources refer to several prophecies she was alleged to have made about local events which have taken place since her death and also to her frequent haunting of the friary ruins.
Outside the ruined church there are well over 100 headstones in the cemetery which contain the following (Irish, Scottish Gaelic and Lowland and English) surnames:
Viewed from inside the church it can be seen that the present very uneven level of the cemetery has risen considerably above that of the church floor as a result of the large number of burials over the centuries. Most of the graves are situated in the area bounded by the old pre-1808 walls and the oldest headstones, as expected, are located to the south of the church.
Although not many of the headstones provide details of more than two generations, there is a wealth of genealogical information in the cemetery. Many of the names in the above list are found on two or more headstones but the most frequent surname is that of McCormick which occurs on six inscriptions.
There are seven headstones with either full heraldic bearings (Arthur Ker, 1738, Daniel McKay, 1736 and Alexander McDonnell 1764), semi heraldic devices (John Daragh, 1745, Mary McMichael, 1714, [?] McHenry, 18--) or crest (Roger McFarland, now illegible due to weathering). Alexander McDonnell was a skilled stonemason who ‘wrought this monument for his family, 1764’.
It is probable that John Gage, born 1775, died 1841, was a son of the Revd. Robert Gage, landowner and rector of Rathlin, who had a large family nine sons and daughters. Robert’s father, John Gage, born 1693 at Coleraine, had purchased Rathlin Island in 1746 from the 5th Earl of Antrim who was in some financial difficulty at that time.
Some of those buried were not natives of the area as they were coastguards or policemen, both of which organisations did not permit men to serve in their home areas. John Duffy, of Skerries, Co. Dublin, erected a tomb in memory of his wife, Mary, and their children, John Fanning and Jane Fanning, which gives a possible clue to the maiden name of their mother as well as his place of origin.
The McGildowny headstone, now much overgrown with briars, provides information about several members of the family from 1720 to 1887. The McGildowny family were descendents of a Catholic gentry family from the Glens. The family leased land from the Antrim estate in the early eighteenth century and between 1800 and 1832 Edmund McGildowny was the principal agent for the MacDonnells. In the nineteenth century the family lived at Clare Park, Ballycastle.
A simple headstone commemorates a much appreciated Ballycastle physician about whom nothing else appears to have survived. The inscription reads: ‘In memory of Dr James Beattie of Ballycastle who was adorned by every requisite to form the Physician and the genuine philanthropic, rare and distinguished abilities were chiefly employed in the cause of humanity to soften the afliction [sic] and to bind up its wounds, to be deprived of such talents and virtue is a public loss, tho [sic] snatched away in the prime of manhood, his character is indelibly marked as the friend of the poor. He died the 26th January 1814’.
There is another monument, a Celtic cross, also erected by the people of Ballycastle after World War I in memory of those ‘who gave their lives in defence of the Empire’. It stands close to the graves of sailors of the Royal and Merchant Navies from both world wars. Six of those sailors (James Griffin and five unnamed) served on SS Viknor, originally a large ocean yacht of the Blue Line launched in 1888, which was requisitioned by the Royal Navy and fitted out for service as an armed merchant cruiser in 1914. It was part of the squadron blockading the north-west approaches when it struck a mine off Tory Island in January 1915 and all 295 sailors on board, including 25 from Newfoundland, were lost.
Four sailors (Harvey, McKay, Walter and one unnamed) served on HMS Racoon, a destroyer, built in 1910. After service in the Mediterranean the ship returned to serve with the destroyer flotilla stationed off the north coast of Ireland. It struck rocks off North Donegal in a snowstorm in January 1918 and all 91 sailors on board were drowned. Bodies from both ships are also buried at other coastal churchyards including Ballintoy, Billy and Rathlin in north Antrim and Colonsay in Scotland.
There are other war graves in the same part of the cemetery. They include the graves of four unknown sailors, J. McDonald of the RAF drowned at sea 1942, two soldiers -E.C. Jordan from England, J.R. Townshend from Canada – and a sailor W. Fisken, 1942, whose wife, from Glasgow, was buried in the grave in 1960.
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