The Church of Ireland

Diocese of Clogher

Trory and Killadeas

Incumbency : Vacant

 

Pastoral Cover: The Revd C. Matchett

 

The Rectory, Rossfad, Ballinamallard,

Co. Fermanagh. BT93 2LS

Service Times

 

10.00am Killadeas

11.30am Trory

Trory Church

Priory Church, Killadeas

Killadeas Church and Churchyard - A Brief History

The year 1981 marked the centenary of the Priory Church, however, the present structure represents only a small portion of the history of this ancient site.

The name Killadeas tells us something of the site’s history. The word is a corruption of ‘Culdees’, the ‘Ceili De of Companions of God’, a monastic order which was prominent from the eighth century onwards on nearby Devenish and other islands of Lower Lough Erne.

Mary Rogers, in her history ‘Prospect of Erne’, writes that substantial and elaborately carved stones in the Killadeas churchyard bear pre-Christian symbolism; the well known bishop’s stone itself is thought to have been adopted by the Christians when they took over what had been a pagan site. Other ancient stones also bear markings of earlier rituals and beliefs.

A previous structure, whose ruins were noted by Isaac Butler in 1744, was known as the Yellow Church because of the colour of its stonework. According to legend, this church was first built on the wrong site because of the founder’s incorrect interpretation of a vision; after it had been finished and consecrated, angels credited with its being ‘in one night taken up and laid where it is now’.

When the new church was built in 1881, it incorporated the stones of the earlier construction. Some of those stones may be seen as part of the archway that now separates the nave from the choir and chancel.