Born near Rathmolyon, 1897
The Two by Twos
William Irvine was an evangelist with the interdenominational Faith Mission when, in October 1897, a businessman named Jack Carroll invited him to hold a series of mission meetings near Rathmolyon. Irvine preached that the established churches were false and that the only valid ministry was the itinerant one described in Matthew 10 - workers going out two by two, owning nothing, depending on hospitality. He recruited his first followers here. The first convention was held on a local farm around 1900, with attendees camping for weeks. The movement spread worldwide and is usually counted as the only religion to have originated in Ireland. It was also rigid: Edward Cooney, the preacher whose name stuck to the Irish branch as the Cooneyites, was himself excommunicated in 1928. The doctrine left no church buildings and kept no membership lists, so the place it started has nothing to show a visitor but the fields and the memory.
St Michael, twice over
Two churches, one saint
Rathmolyon has two churches and both are dedicated to St Michael. St Michael's Roman Catholic church was blessed and dedicated in 1968 by Most Rev John McCormack, Bishop of Meath. St Michael and All Angels, the Church of Ireland church, is the older of the two. The village keeps its history in its buildings rather than its monuments - Georgian and Victorian houses including Cherryvalley House, Rathmolyon Villa and Rathmolyon House sit along the roads out of the crossroads. None of it is grand. All of it is intact, which in a small Irish village is its own kind of achievement.
Rathmolyon GAA
A hurling village in football country
Meath is football country - the green and gold of the senior footballers is the county's identity. Rathmolyon is one of the small pockets that goes the other way, fielding a hurling club whose ground sits on the eastern edge of the village. In a county where most parishes barely puck a ball, a working hurling club is a quiet act of local stubbornness, and on a championship Sunday it is the busiest the village gets.