Aghavea St Laserian (Brookeborough)

History

Aghavea means the field of the birch trees. The church at Aghavea is linked in antiquity with the church at Clogher and has St Lasair as its patron. Little is recorded of her beyond her education with St Molaise of Devenish and references to a bell associated with her, which was used for holding water and collecting money.

A church is recorded on this site in the Taxation of 1306, where it is called the parish church of Akadynbeychi, and the ecclesiastical site appears in the Annals of the Four Masters and the Annals of Ulster. The annals record the church burned in 1458 together with many valuable books, the stone church burned again in 1487 and a further burning in 1507, in which the greater part of the riches of the country were destroyed. The site was included in the 1603 Survey of Ulster and the Inquisition of 1609, and it is shown roofless on the Baronial Map of 1610. The present church was built in 1800, reportedly using stones from the earlier buildings on the site.

Notable features

The church stands within an ecclesiastical enclosure of much earlier date than the building. Within the churchyard the enclosure survives as a low stone and earthen bank, up to 3 metres wide and 0.4 metres high, traceable from the south-east through west to north, and the whole enclosure measures around 85 metres by 65 metres.

Proposals for a new church hall on ground opposite the church required archaeological assessment and limited excavation, carried out by the Environment and Heritage Service on behalf of the parish between April and August 2000. The work found significant deposits and features across the site, dating back as much as 1,500 years to the Early Christian and medieval periods, among them a ditch with an internal palisade slot later built over, further enclosure ditches, a metalled roadway leading to the church and bowl furnaces. Finds included Early Christian souterrain ware, lignite and glass beads, locally made medieval everted-rim pottery, a quernstone fragment reused as a sharpening stone and a coin of the early fifteenth century.

A decorated stone from one of the earlier churches at Aghavea, carrying a reference to a priest named Dunchad, is held in the National Museum of Ireland in Dublin.