ARDNAGEEHY, a parish

ARDNAGEEHY, a parish, in the barony of BARRYMORE, county of CORK, and province of MUNSTER, 5 miles (S. W.) from Rathcormac, on the mail coach road from Cork to that place; containing 3715 inhabitants. It comprises 15,546 statute acres, as applotted under the tithe act, and valued at £5708 per annum. The Nagle mountains and Leppers Hill form a tract of nearly 6000 acres, and on the south side of the river Bride are nearly 2000 acres of waste land: these lands are generally rough pasture, affording but a very scanty supply of herbage for cattle. Of the lands under cultivation, the greater portion is in tillage, and the system of agriculture is improving. There are about 400 acres of bog, but it is not worked. The substratum of the soil is clay-slate; a coarse heavy kind of slate is quarried for roofing, and flag-stones are found in abundance, but neither are worked to any extent.

There are several large and handsome houses in the parish, the principal of which are Bridestown, the residence of E. Morgan, Esq.; Mount Pleasant, of the Rev. E. G. Hudson; Kiluntin, of R. Roche, Esq.; Glanassack, of Mrs. Wallis; and Westmount, of M. Westropp, Esq. A small paper-rnill is worked at Glenville, where fairs for cattle, sheep, and pigs are held on the 4th of May and the 3rd of November. There are constabulary police stations at Glenville and Watergrass-hill. Petty sessions are held at the latter place every alternate Tuesday. The living is a rectory and vicarage, in the diocese of Cork, and in the patronage of the Bishop; the tithes amount to £438. 9. 3. The church is a neat modern edifice, situated at Glenville, for the erection of which the late Board of First Fruits gave £500 in 1798. There is no glebe-house; and the glebe, comprising 40 acres purchased by the same Board, has been lost through some defect in the title.

In the R. C. divisions the parish is the head of a union or district, also called Watergrass-hill, which comprises the parishes of Ardnageehy and Ballynaultig, and parts of those of Dunbollogue and Kilquane; there are chapels at Glenville and Watergrass-hill, both small plain buildings. The parochial male and female schools at Glenville are supported chiefly by the rector, and there is another school for boys and girls on the demesne of Glenville, for which the proprietor built a school-house in 1821: about 200 children are taught in these schools, and there are six hedge schools, in which are about 300 children, and a Sunday school. About two miles to the south of the church are the ruins of the old parish church, romantically situated among the hills.