The church at Grange also known as Kilmore church and in other sources as St Patrick’s is a late medieval structure within an expansive graveyard. I can find very little information on the origin of this church though the name grange would appear to suggest that at one stage this would have been an abbey or a monastery and that the monks would have worked the agricultural land in the area. I did however find several mentions of a wayside funerary tradition in local folklore that appears to be practiced up to the present day. The custom seems to have medieval origins and involves members of the funeral cortege leaving a cross, which historically was usually made from left over coffin wood at the ‘Brandy’ crossroads near Kilmore. A record of this practice and a photo of it is recorded in the 1930s Dúchas Schools Collection as told by a Thomas Doyle of Ballyask, “This custom has been commonly practised at Brandycross, Sarshill and Tenacre all in the neighbourhood of the old churches of Kilturk, Tomhaggard and Kilmore and also at Barrow in Wexford. In all these places the pieces of wood remaining over from the boards out of which the coffin has been made were fashioned into crosses a couple of feet high and painted in various colours. These were then carried by the chief mourners and placed on or at the foot of a hawthorn or ash tree convenient to the cross roads nearest to the graveyard towards which the funeral wends its sorrowful way”

GPS: 52.19694, -6.56457