Tea Lane Graveyard

Tea Lane Graveyard
Conolly chapel
Details
Established	7th century AD
Location	Church Road, Celbridge, County Kildare
Country	Republic of Ireland
Coordinates	53.338772°N 6.546788°W / 53.338772; -6.546788
Type	Christian
Style	Rural cemetery
Owned by	Glasnevin Trust
Size	3,140 m^2 (0.775 acre)
No. of graves	thousands
Website	tealanegraveyard.com
Find a Grave	Tea Lane Graveyard

Tea Lane Graveyard (Irish: Reilig Lána an Tae) is a Christian cemetery located in Celbridge, Ireland.[1][2][3][4]

History

The site is located 500 m northwest of the River Liffey and is the reputed burial site of Saint Mochua of Timahoe (died 657). Mochua built a wooden church on the site and was the first abbot of Clondalkin. It stood on the Slighe Mhor, an ancient roadway which ran from Dublin to Galway.[5]

The Normans handed over control of St Mochua's church to the Abbey Church of Saint Thomas the Martyr, Dublin in 1215; the abbey supplied Celbridge with its priests. After the Dissolution of the Monasteries the abbey was suppressed and came into the possession of the Anglican Church of Ireland.[6]

The present church building was built c. 1860, incorporating material from the medieval church (c. 1600).[7]

The placename dates to the 19th century, when many English workers were brought over to work at Celbridge mill; the locals noted the large amounts of tea they drank, and the tealeaves that they threw into the roadway,[8] and Church Lane was nicknamed "Tea Lane."[9]

Gallery

• 
  Mortuary chapel
• 
  Ruined medieval church, with tracery fragment visible in the windowframe

Notable burials

Memorial plaque to Vol. Michael Heffernan

• Katherine Conolly (1662–1752), wife of William Conolly
• Lady Louisa Conolly (1743–1821), one of the famous Lennox Sisters
• William Conolly (1662–1729), Speaker of the Irish House of Commons and builder of Castletown House
• Many of the Dongan family[10]
• Henry Grattan (junior) (1789–1859), Whig Member of Parliament
• Vol. Michael Heffernan (1889–1954); member of the Irish Volunteers and Irish Republican Army and fought in the 1916 Easter Rising, Irish War of Independence and Irish Civil War (on the anti-Treaty side)[11][12]
• Saint Mochua of Timahoe (d. 657)[13]
• Air Mechanic, Second Class C.J. Sheridan, Royal Air Force (1900–1921); the only World War soldier in Tea Lane[14]

References

1. "Tea Lane Graveyard Conservation Project". www.facebook.com.
2. "History morning at Celbridge's Tea Lane graveyard".
3. McCarthy, Patricia (12 July 2017). Life in the Country House in Georgian Ireland. Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art. ISBN 9780300218862 – via Google Books.
4. D'Arcy, Fergus A. (1 January 2007). Remembering the War Dead: British Commonwealth and International War Graves in Ireland Since 1914. Stationery Office. ISBN 9780755775897 – via Google Books.
5. "New conservation project for Tea Lane graveyard in Celbridge – Kildare Local History . ie". kildarelocalhistory.ie.
6. Doohan, Tony (1984). A History of Celbridge. Genprint Ltd, Dublin. pp. 8, 71–72.
7. "Tea Lane Graveyard, Church Road, Celbridge, County Kildare". www.buildingsofireland.ie.
8. O'Dowd, Desmond J. (1 October 1997). Changing times: the story of religion in 19th century Celbridge. Irish Academic Press. ISBN 9780716526353 – via Google Books.
9. "Celbridge History by Charles Graham (1896)". 5 February 2013.
10. Higgins, Aidan (12 July 1995). Donkey's years: memories of a life as story told. Secker & Warburg. ISBN 9780436203046 – via Internet Archive. tea lane.
11. "Tea Lane Graveyard Conservation Project". www.facebook.com.
12. "Sinn Fein lay wreath at Heffernan memorial in Kildare".
13. "Projects | National Heritage Week 14-22 August 2021".
14. "Casualty Details | CWGC".