Dangan Townland Long Ago and Now

 Joe Littleton

As I delved into the history of my townland Dangan, during the ‘Reading Your Local Landscape’ training course I decided to look at what was there long ago and what remains of that heritage today.

Location

Location of Dangan. Data from the basemap gallery accessed on the Heritage Maps Viewer at www.heritagemaps.ie 26-6-2023

Dangan is in the Electoral Division of Dangan, in the Civil Parish of Quin, in the Barony of Bunratty Upper, in the County of Clare. It covers an area of

• 3,074,932 m² / 307.49 hectares / 3.0749 km²
• 1.19 square miles
• 759.83 acres / 759 acres, 3 roods, 13 perches

Ringforts

Aerial view of Shankill ringfort. Data from the basemap gallery accessed on the Heritage Maps Viewer at www.heritagemaps.ie 26-6-2023

A ringfort which exists in close proximity to the Shankill Church (in ruins) is the earliest evidence of human settlement in Dangan. Ringforts were enclosed farmsteads which can date back to 500 BC. They are usually circular in plan and can measure from 20 to 60 metres in diameter. They were enclosed by one or more earthen banks. The ringfort at Dangan on the attached O/S map is quite substantial and another ringfort can be seen close to Cullagh Lough.

Dangan Castle

Dangan Castle (https://archaeology.ie)

The placename Dangan comes from the Irish ‘An Daingean’ which translates as ‘Fortress’.

William O’ Lionain wrote in his list of 109 castles of Co. Clare in 1735 that ‘Daingean Ui Bhigin’ was built by the McNamaras. O’ Lionain lists the following McNamaras who erected the castle: Cumheadha, the son of MacCon, who was the son of Lochlainn (MacConmara) and his son Donnchadh.

However, in his Topographical Dictionary of Ireland 1837 Samuel Lewis wrote Dangan Castle is said to be one of the oldest in Munster and was built by Phillip de Clare, from whom the County of Thomond has since been called Clare.

Risteárd Ua Croínín and Martin Breen dispute De Clare having built the castle saying there is no evidence that he had any hand in the building of the castle. In the Other Clare Volume 10 they state that it is very likely that Dangan Castle was built early in the 14^th century and they base this judgement on the antiquity and architecture of the castle.

Plan of Dangan Castle (O’Croinin R.)

The castle was quite extensive covering an area of 120 feet x130 feet approx. It includes a keep. (Traditionally keeps were built as a type of fortified tower which were constructed by European nobility). They were built inside castles during the Middle Ages. They were used as a refuge or a place of last resort in the event of the castle falling into the hands of the enemies of the castle inhabitants.

Numerous castles/towerhouses were built in County Clare during the fifteenth century and more than eighty were in the hands of the McNamaras. It appears that Daingean Ui Bhigin maintained its place as the headquarters of Clancullen territory until the first quarter of the 17^th century.

Sioda, son of McCon McNamara surrendered his castles and lands in the baronies of Dangan, Bunratty and Tulla to King Henry VIII on 10^th December 1542 so that they would be re-granted to him and his heirs under Civil Law. They appear to have some success in their conforming attitudes as in 1585 each barony in the possession of McNamara was required to send twenty cows to John McNamara on the marriage of his eldest daughter and was also obliged to support his horses and servants with food and meat during feasts at Christmas and Easter at Dangan Ui Bhigin castle.  According to the census of Ireland of 1659 there was a population of 35 in Dangan-Ui-Bhigin and Pierce Creagh was title holder.  According to this census Quin town had a population of 82.

John McNamara had lived at Dangan Castle with his mother Margret nee Shaughnessy until driven out by the Cromwellian forces.

Dangan Castle was partially demolished around 1652 during the final years of the Cromwellian War. It is suggested that Cromwell’s army used explosives as large masses of masonry from the turret were scattered over a wide area. When Charles II was restored to the throne, John McNamara petitioned for his lands at Dangan, Quin and Knappogue to be returned to him. In his request he described himself as “An Innocent person who was constantly faithful and loyal to Charles II and his father and who had served the King abroad”.

Remains of the banqueting Hall Dangan Castle (https://www.archaeology.ie)

His petition was heard at King’s Inns, Dublin and was found in his favour. However, his estates at Dangan had been allocated to two landlords Creagh and White who were allowed to remain in possession of the land.

Today, the ruins of Daingean Ui Bhigin are to be found about three miles North East of Quin village in dense forestry.

Dominic McGlinchey was an Irish republican paramilitary leader who moved from the Provisional IRA to become head of the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA) paramilitary group in the early 1980s.  He went on the run in the Republic where he was arrested in 1977 after holding two unarmed Gardai prisoner and stripping them of their uniforms in Co Leitrim. It is strongly believed that McGlinchey took up residence in Dangan Castle while on the run from the authorities (though obviously not with the same level of comfort as former inhabitants the McNamaras).

The Creagh Family and Dangan House

Under the Act of Settlement, Pierce Creagh (a Roman Catholic) was awarded the McNamara lands at Dangan Castle and Knappogue. Creagh was a former Mayor of Limerick in 1651. He died at Dangan in 1670. His great grandson, also Pierce Creagh, married three times and was survived by three sons. The eldest, Robert Creagh of Dangan, was succeeded by his nephews, Richard, and then, Cornelius Creagh, who owned over 6,000 acres in County Clare in the 1870s.  Most of the Creagh estate was in the barony of Burren, parishes of Killeany and Kilmoon and in the parish of Quin, barony of Bunratty Upper.

Creagh Crest on the bridge at Dangan

Sometime in the late 18^th or early 19^th century they built Dangan House. This was a long, two storey, hip-roofed house with small round turrets and a basement, farm buildings to the south of the house and a walled garden to the west.  There was a drive from the east and from the south. The latter had a gate lodge on the Quin road and passed over a nineteenth-century bridge, which carries the family crest.

Cornelius’s two sons died without successors and the estate passed to their sister Olivia who married Hugh MacNamara Mahon. They assumed the additional surname of Creagh in 1885.

The Creagh family looked after their tenants sympathetically in times of difficulty such as the famine. The family presented the altar rail and sanctuary lamp to Quin Catholic church and the site on which Dangan School was built for the education of the boys and girls of the area

In 1906 Mrs Mahon Creagh and Mrs Butler Creagh held over 350 acres of untenanted land and Dangan House which had been valued at £30.10 shillings in 1855 by Griffiths Valuation. Hugh Weir (Houses of Clare) writes that the Dangan estate was sold in the 1920s and the land divided by the Land Commission. The house was demolished in 1948.

Brook Lodge/Dangan Ville

This medium sized Georgian residence was built by Pierce Creagh towards the end of the 18th century. It was occupied by William O’ Connell in 1814 and by Pierce O’ Brien who held it from Pierce Creagh in the mid-19^th century when the house was valued at over £13 under Griffith’s Valuation. (NUI Galway Landed Estates Database)

Amby Power

The house has had a number of owners since. One of the best remembered are the Power family. Amby Power captained the first Clare team to win the All Ireland Hurling Championship of 1914. Also on that team was his brother Joe. The prized All Ireland trophy at the time was The Great Southern Challenge Cup. This was the trophy that preceded the Liam McCarthy Cup.

This was Clare’s one and only hurling all Ireland for eighty one years until Anthony Daly brought the Liam McCarthy cup home to Clare in 1995 as captain of the victorious Clare hurling team.

Schools

According to legend, a hedge school existed in Dangan in the eighteenth century. The school was run by Mick Simmons. Ms Olivia McMahon Creagh of Dangan House donated a plot of ground to build the first national school in Dangan in 1876. This was a one roomed structure, later divided into two by the construction of a partition, to make classes for junior and senior pupils. According to the 1901 census, 11 children from Dangan townland attended and others came from outside. The school had no inside toilets and heating was provided with turf and sticks. With no regular cleaning of the chimneys and the burning of wet sticks and turf the smoke filled rooms were often unbearable. In May 1962 the school was burned down as some embers from the grate fell onto the wooden floor. Alternative accommodation was soon found in the shop at Dangan Cross owned by Mary Hogan. Work commenced quickly on the construction of a modern two room national school with indoor toilets, electricity and central heating. This new school was opened in 1964.

Following years of a well-attended national school the numbers had dropped to under 15 in the early 2000s making the running of the school unviable. The school closed in 2015 and the remaining students were accommodated in Quin national school or the school most convenient to the individual family. The school was sold in 2020 and was converted to a modern dwelling house.

Seanchoill (Shankill Church) and the Cillín or Children’s Graveyard

Ruins of Shankill Church

Memorial stone in the Cillin

The ruin of Shankill church in Dangan is surrounded by a graveyard within which is a Cillín. Peg Burns who lived in a little house near Dangan Cross and Kate Clancy were the last adult people to be buried in this graveyard.

The rules of the Catholic Church in relation to the burial of unbaptised children operated until the 1940s. The heartbreak of parents and siblings is unimaginable where the unbaptised children were brought to the Cilín in the middle of the night by the father and uncle or close relation of the dead child to be buried in silence. The grave was normally marked with a stone on the ground. After the ending of this unchristian practice unbaptised children were buried in their family graveyard where the families and friends can now grieve and comfort each other during their hour of need.

18^th, 19^th and 20^th century Dangan

Dangan Village in the 19^th century was sited some hundreds of yards from what we now regard as the central part of the town land i.e. Dangan Cross where a grocery shop existed up until the late 1970s. It was owned by John and Maggie Mulqueen up until the mid-1950s when they retired from business. Under different ownership the shop continued to trade as a shop until the mid-1970s

1917 rent receipt

At this time tenants rented the land from the landlord. Illustrated is a receipt for rent paid by Patrick Lawlor to Mrs Olivia and Clara Creagh in respect of a half years rent paid in the English currency sterling at the time. The receipt is dated the 24^th of August 1917.

Today, most farmers own their land, although some may rent from other farmers. Few people now depend entirely on farming for their livelihoods.

While the Creagh family (the local landlord) lived in Dangan House their tenants lived in small cottages with often two and three families living together with a number of children sleeping in one bed. The modern houses seen today in Dangan are much more comfortable. Families now are much smaller and emigration is very much by choice as opposed to the forced emigration of past centuries.

Field Names

Growing up on a farm in Dangan townland I remember many small fields had a name. Some were easily distinguishable such as “The field up along by the river”, “the field at the bridge” and “The Quarter” (a quarter of an acre). Other fields were named for the landscape such as “The Cragg”,  “The Kyles”, “the Jennets cragg” “The Bog” and the ““Cúl Riasc”

With the subsequent amalgamation of fields their names have become less important

The Creaghs got their name from the word craobh – a branch. This stems from the time when they fought the Vikings and carried branches of trees, perhaps for camouflage. The Creaghs of Dangan are gone for ever. The only reminder of their name is the townland Creevagh (An Craobhach) meaning a branch. It was once a branch of Dangan estate.

Thank you

Many thanks to Ann McNamara and Michael Houlihan of Quin Heritage Group, for information supplied and all their help and support, which is greatly appreciated.  My thanks also to Clare County Library.