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Carmelite History
It was from such an environment as pertained in the previous century that a young local youth Tadgh O'Connell joined the Friars and was sent to Europe to complete his studies for Priestly Ordination. On his return he was posterd to Kinsale to engage in pastoral ministry. He was appalled that the local Irish had no proper reading material for their spiritual nourishment and so he also involved himself in translating such classics as ' Trompette du ciel' (Trompa na bhflaitas) and Misterios del monte Calvario into the native Irish tongue (Gaelic). The Penal Laws or 'Popery Code' resulted in the Friars risking life and limb as they moved furtively from place to place ministering to peoples' spiritual, material, educational and other needs. The Friars tried in 1720 to return to Rathmore Beg and to their 'olde masshouse' but found it beyond human habitation and repair so they had to look elsewhere for accommodation. That same year,1720, an Act of Parliament declared " interment in the ruins of a Popish Monastery" illegal and prosecutable and it was obviously aimed at the old abbey now in ruins and deemed because of it's associations with the friars an ideal burial ground by the poor locals who were unable due to financial constraints to convey their deceased relatives back to their native homelands for internment.
In 1730 a local Protestant landlord Francis Kearney from nearby Garrettstown offered the Friars a plot of land due south of Rathmore Beg in the poorer section of the town among the weavers' hovels on Lower Catholic Walk. In 1735 the Friars built, a friary, church, a small outhouse and a garden. Fr. Patrick O'Mahoney 'purchased' the land in 1737 and was appointed Prior in 1739. Come 1747 Fr. O'Mahony was arrested and imprisoned for illegally owning land. Kearney intervened on O'Mahoney's behalf establishing his own credentials to the property. Later on in 1747 Fr. O'Mahoney was appointed
Town Almoner. Dr. John Butler afterwards Lord Dunboyne on assuming the episcopacy of Cork in 1763 tried unsuccessfully by varied means to appropriate the Friary Chapel from the Carmelites and make it the Parish chapel. Eventually he partially achieved his aim by withdrawing faculties from the Carmelites in Kinsale. The matter was referred to Rome with letters from the local Parish priest Philip O'Mahony who along with thirteen principle parishners testified that the chapel and the convent were built by and owned solely by the Carmelite Order.
In 1786 a group of inebriated soldiers from the town's barracks ran amok as they returned to their barracks torching the chapel's thatched roof as they passed along the road. A local lad from nearby Kilbrittain born in 1763 Lawrence Callanan trecked all the way in to Kinsale to join the Carmelite friars.