Grange
An Ghráinseach

The Ireland's Ancient East
STOP 02 / 02

An Ghráinseach · Co. Waterford

The Waterford Grange — a pub, a church and a school on the N25 between Youghal and Dungarvan.

There are a lot of Granges in Ireland. There is a Grange in Sligo with the surf and Mullaghmore around the corner. There is a Grange in Kilkenny, and one in Louth, and one in Tipperary. This is none of them. This Grange is a small west-Waterford village on the N25, a few minutes inland from Ardmore, with a Roman Catholic church, a national school, a handful of houses and the traffic going past on its way to Youghal or Dungarvan.

The name is the whole story. Gráinseach — a monastic grange, a granary, the outlying farm of a religious house where tenants brought a tenth of the corn for the clergy. The village sits on top of that old arrangement and has done quietly for centuries. The parish church was built in 1837 by Rev. Patrick McGrath. The older church, called Lisginan, is a ruin in the graveyard with an ogham pillar stone in it. If you stop, that is what you stop for. Otherwise the village does not ask much of you, and it would be honest to keep going to Ardmore for the round tower and the sea.

Population

A few hundred

Walk score

A church, a school, a shop or two, a pub — a five-minute walk end to end

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Stories & lore.

The reason to come back. The things every local will eventually tell you about, usually after the second pint.

A monastic granary

The name

Grange — Gráinseach in Irish — was the term for an outlying farm of a religious house, the place where tenant farmers brought the tenth part of their corn for the clergy. The word came in through Norman French (graunge) from the Latin granica, a granary. Christian monks worked the land here, kept the farming methods, and the placename outlasted the monks. Ireland has dozens of Granges for the same reason. This is one of them.

Two villages, one parish

The Ardmore–Grange parish

Ardmore and Grange together make up the Roman Catholic parish of Ardmore and Grange. Ardmore has the famous round tower, the cathedral ruin, the cliff walk and the sea. Grange has the parish church, built in 1837 by Rev. Patrick McGrath, and a national school. Locals will tell you the relationship cleanly: Ardmore is where the visitors go, Grange is where some of them live.

In the old graveyard

The Lisginan ogham stone

The medieval church in Grange — known as Lisginan — survives as a fragment of north and south walls and a stub of gable, plain early-English work. In the graveyard attached, there is a stunted ogham-inscribed pillar stone, the kind of thing west Waterford turns up regularly and treats casually. Two smaller headstones nearby are cut with odd geometric figures that nobody has ever quite explained. None of it is signposted in any serious way. You just go in and look.