St. Tida - & Church Island
(Taoide, Thaddeus, Toit or Toide are various
other versions of the name!)
Church Island, on Lough Beg
which is really a wide part of the Lower Bann River, has the ruin of an old
church, complete with spire which was added later by the Earl of Bristol
(Bishop of Derry, also known as Bishop Hervey) around 1788. He desired to
see the location of the ruins better from a
grand palace which he
also built on the grounds of what is now 'Ballyscullion House'. This
palace which cost £100,000 to build was started in 1787 and partially finished in
1805. It was reputed to have had the best Italian marble and notably 365
windows. Later, when it transferred
to his nephew on the Bishop's death, the government of the day applied a
punitive window tax and the 'palace' was demolished in 1813 after standing
for only some 8 years! Much of the rubble was re-cycled to build the Some remains can still be found in the woods but,
interestingly, the portico was carefully dismantled, ferried by barge and
re-built in Belfast as the entrance to
St George's Church.
The spire is
known locally as Hervey’s Folly. During World War II an American aircraft
based at the nearby Creagh air-base hit it with its wing tip and put a
pronounced kink in it. It has since been partially straightened by the
Department of the Environment who now look after it.
Around the
wall-steads is an old cemetery containing about fifty known graves, and the
site of the ancient monastery..
It is
known that the Church was in ruins by the year 1603 having apparently been
burned down during the ‘Plantation’ period and that in the year of 1798
during the Rebellion, many women and children were forced to take shelter on
this and other islands of Lough Beg.
Visitors
can walk in the summer months across the water meadows to the island from
the County Londonderry side.
Church Island is not
an 'island' as such insofar that only its eastern flank is adjoined by
water. After the dredging of the River Bann in the 1940s, the water on
the west side of the island receded - although after really bad weather the
swollen waters again completely surround the place.
The water
meadows known as ‘The Strand’ stretch to over 300 acres and are alive with
bird some of which reside here permanently and some of which migrate in
from other parts of the northern hemisphere. Birds such as snipe, redshank,
peewit, mixed with black-tailed godwit, green sand piper, wood sandpiper,
greenshank and knot. Thousands of geese and ducks fly in during the winter
from Russia and other northern sources to take advantage of the excellent
feeding available. Many rare
plants including Pennyroyal and the Irish Ladies' Tresses orchid share this
habitat with the birds. |
