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Kildemock & its Jumping Church

Kildemock is one of countless little ruined churches all over the country. Embosomed in our green Irish fields, the graves of its dead around it, it is a quiet spot now, apart from the daily life of men. Yet it was not always like this. There was a time when it stood whole and entire under a roof of small medieval slates, its stone altar at the east end lighted by a stained-glass window, its threshold well worn by the feet of frequent worshippers. For it was a parish church, serving the people of ten townlands round about which constituted the parish, Paughanstown, Roestown, Hacklim, Millockstown (in which the church itself is), Hunterstown, Anaglog, Rathlust, Kilpatrick, Drakestown and Blakestown.

To find the origin of Kildemock we must go back a full fifteen hundred years, to the dawn of Christianity in Ireland. When Saint Patrick came here and converted the local chieftain and his people, he gave the care of the new flock to one of his disciples called Diomoc (pronounced Dim-ock), the same whose name survives also in Kildimo in County Limerick, in Kildeema in Clare, in Killeenadeema in Galway, and elsewhere. For their pastor, the local people built a little church of wattle and clay which they called by his name, Cill, or cell, of Diomoc, and which they afterwards replaced by a more permanent one in stone.


	For many centuries church and parish had an uneventful existence. Then came the Anglo-Norman invasion. Around the twelfth century the newcomers reached County Louth and in no time at all had settled in as undisputed masters. Alien as they were in many ways, these foreigners shared with their Irish subjects the common faith of Christendom. They, too, were accustomed to build monasteries and endow churches. Sir Ralph Pipard, Lord of Ardee, was not behind his fellows in this respect and when a monastery was built for the Knights Templars at Kilsaran a few miles from here, he hastened to grant it the advowson of Kildemock

The dispossessed native population began to settle, during what centuries we know not, outside the wall beyond this Head Gate, and the name " Irish Street " grew into use to designate their lines of houses. The name has thus an important historical reference, and is a memorial for the native race, who have leapt over the walls and regained their ancient territory, of the times when Ardee was a frontier fortress of the English colony in Ireland.