The Friends of Rathcore Church successfully completed the purchase of the church, avenue, and car park for approximately €77,000.
Hazel Bye, Linda Young and Percy Foster, who all have personal and family ties to St Ultan's Church, Rathcore, came together over the last couple of years to devise the plan to restore this nationally protected monument for its future use as a heritage, cultural, community and environmental education space.
To formalise their efforts, they established a non-profit heritage company, Friends of Rathcore Church CLG, to lead the project and became its directors. This kind of structure is typical for non-profit led heritage conversions in Ireland and gave the group a legal entity to purchase and manage the project.
The funds for the purchase were provided as loans by the three directors.
“While honouring and respecting its spiritual history as a protected structure and as a national monument, the plan is to restore and conserve the building, retain its ecclesiastical feel, while at the same time giving it a modern role as a shared heritage, cultural, community, environmental education space use for the people of Rathcore in perpetuity,” said Linda Young.
Worship at St Ultan’s ceased at the end of 2023 — the final service took place on 31st December 2023, and the building was deconsecrated in 2025. Since then, the building has been lying idle.
“We want to thank the Church of Ireland Parish of Rathmolyon Union for selling the church to us and for their donation towards the storm damage repairs that happened last December. We look forward to working with the Parish on the site as the graveyard surrounding the church remains in the ownership and management of the Church of Ireland. The graveyard is shared with the Roman Catholic community as was the practice going back many centuries,” said Haze Byel.
The model for the new facility will follow the examples of St Catherine’s Cultural Centre in Kinsale and St George’s Art and Heritage Centre, Mitchelstown.
Percy Foster said “Every step of the way we bounced decisions off former councillor Niamh Souhan, local accountant, Niall Clinton and former Tánaiste, Mary Coughlan. We want to thank the cross-party support of current politicians to make Rathcore a place of unity; Aisling Dempsey TD, Senator Linda Nelson Murray, Cllrs Pádraig Coffey, Noel French, Ronan Moore, Dave Boyne, Paul O’Rourke and Joe Fox”.
“Linda, Hazel and Percy want to particularly acknowledge and thank the quiet support and words of the encouragement of twelve people who motivated them in their plan over the last three years. Without these twelve people affectionately known as the ‘garden gang’ they would not have taken on this project.”
The directors also thanked local groups for their support and looks forward to collaborating with them providing Rathcore with a meeting space.
Percy said: “While waiting for the sale to complete over the last few months we have prepared six funding applications. We particularly want to thank Meath County Council for the awarding of over €8,000 under the Built Heritage Investment Scheme to cover essential repairs. In mid-Summer we will know if we have been successful in the other funding applications,” he said.
The directors will not be remunerated for their role, The company is supported by Beacon Secretarial Service, O’Shea Barry Solicitors and Clinton Higgins Accountants.
Rathcore Church has been a site for worship for over 1,400 years. It was most likely originally a ring fort and the site given over by the Chieftain for worship. The current church was built in the early 19th century on the site of the original medieval church. The site was used by the Roman Catholic Church and more recently by the Church of Ireland.
The graveyard was used in the traditional way of many Irish parishes – Roman Catholics were buried on the right-hand side and Protestants on the left side. The graveyard was used by the Roman Catholic community until the 20th century.