Virginia, County Cavan, Ireland
Virginia (Irish: Acadh an Iúir ~ originally described as Aghaler meaning 'field at the fork of a river'). The town of Virginia was named in honour of the English Queen Elizabeth 1. The town began as an Ulster Plantation project, where an English adventurer named John Ridgeway was granted the crown patent in August of 1612 to build a new town upon the great road between the already existing towns of Kells and Cavan. The conditions of which were to introduce English settlers to the area and build the town to be of incorporated borough status. Ridgeway had little success in attracting English trades people and settler families into what was then regarded as a hostile territory outside of the protection of the Leinster Pale.
Complaints from the Virginia inhabitants about the lack of development progress reached the Commission by 1638, where upon the second Earl of Fingall, Christopher Plunkett was ordered to submit a substantial bond with the Commission court and to build the church in Virginia or face forfeiture of his county Cavan lands. The Anglican Bishop of Kilmore then William Bedell undertook to lay out the town in accordance with the Commission requirement. However, events which led to the 1641 Rebellion and Irish Confederate Wars enveloped Virginia causing widespread destruction and de-population. The Virginia estate was eventually sold around the year 1750 by the absentee Plunkett's to pay off mounting debts, setting the way for a new landlord Thomas Taylor, to continue in building the town where others had failed.
The Taylor’s had built a substantial mansion (now the Headfort school) beside Kells in County Meath and turned their attention to making the unproductive lands around Virginia into profitable farms through land drainage and deforestation of low lying areas. The results of which brought employment and quickly led to the setting up of local markets and fairs in Virginia where produce was traded on the streets. Virginia's population grew to double from 467 inhabitants between the census years of 1821 to 1841, as did the rapid construction of the town with the Main Street as we know it today. Successive Lords Headfort, and Marques of Headfort, created their own private estate and a hunting lodge (now Park Hotel) overlooking Lough Ramor.
The Irish Potato Famine of 1845-49 caused by successive failures in the potato crop brought with it extreme hardship for the poorer classes in Ireland, death was widespread caused by diseases like typhus and cholera, the result of poor sanitation and deplorable living conditions. Starvation which ravished many parts of the country was averted in Virginia due to the efforts of the local Famine Relief Committee, who made extra rations of Indian meal available in return for hard labour, this included women and children breaking stones for making roads and the building of the local Catholic church which took place during 1845 on lands donated by the landlord.
Complaints from the Virginia inhabitants about the lack of development progress reached the Commission by 1638, where upon the second Earl of Fingall, Christopher Plunkett was ordered to submit a substantial bond with the Commission court and to build the church in Virginia or face forfeiture of his county Cavan lands. The Anglican Bishop of Kilmore then William Bedell undertook to lay out the town in accordance with the Commission requirement. However, events which led to the 1641 Rebellion and Irish Confederate Wars enveloped Virginia causing widespread destruction and de-population. The Virginia estate was eventually sold around the year 1750 by the absentee Plunkett's to pay off mounting debts, setting the way for a new landlord Thomas Taylor, to continue in building the town where others had failed.
The Taylor’s had built a substantial mansion (now the Headfort school) beside Kells in County Meath and turned their attention to making the unproductive lands around Virginia into profitable farms through land drainage and deforestation of low lying areas. The results of which brought employment and quickly led to the setting up of local markets and fairs in Virginia where produce was traded on the streets. Virginia's population grew to double from 467 inhabitants between the census years of 1821 to 1841, as did the rapid construction of the town with the Main Street as we know it today. Successive Lords Headfort, and Marques of Headfort, created their own private estate and a hunting lodge (now Park Hotel) overlooking Lough Ramor.
The Irish Potato Famine of 1845-49 caused by successive failures in the potato crop brought with it extreme hardship for the poorer classes in Ireland, death was widespread caused by diseases like typhus and cholera, the result of poor sanitation and deplorable living conditions. Starvation which ravished many parts of the country was averted in Virginia due to the efforts of the local Famine Relief Committee, who made extra rations of Indian meal available in return for hard labour, this included women and children breaking stones for making roads and the building of the local Catholic church which took place during 1845 on lands donated by the landlord.
Until relatively recently emigration was a feature of rural Irish life down through the centuries and Virginia was no exception to this. Perhaps the most famous Virginia emigrant was General Philip H. Sheridan, whose parents came from nearby Killinkere, left Ireland around 1830 and settled in America. Sheridan through his successful military career during the American Civil War eventually became commanding General of the US Army and had many honours bestowed upon him. Other famous people who have associations to Virginia are Dean Jonathan Swift who penned his well known novel Gulliver’s Travels while staying nearby at Quilca, the home of his cleric friend Thomas Sheridan who later became headmaster of Cavan's Royal School. John Rowley whom was an Anglican clergyman and living in Virginia during the period that the First Fruits church was built. Admiral Rowley also helped to finance the rebuilding of the church after a major fire destroyed the roof on Christmas night 1830.