The church was erected in 1772. The tower, from a previous church built by the Carmelites, was incorporated into the building and still stands. The house which was the residence of the church sexton is now the town library. Part of the old wall of Athboy can be seen at the end of the cemetery this was built by the Normans in the 11th century to protect the settlement.
St. James’s Well is located south of the Church of Ireland church, on the boundary of the townlands of Glebe and Town Parks. St. James’s Well was said to have been opened during a time of plague and its waters were found to be of great efficacy in relieving the stricken people. Some say that St. James’s Well arose in 1575 when the Annals of the Four Masters recorded a drought, in which no rain fell ‘from Bealtaine to Lammas’, which resulted in disease and plague. People went to the well on the saint’s feast day on 25 July to obtain water. It was believed that if the water was rubbed on sore limbs, the pains went away.
Mordecai Jones and Sanotic Koniste
John Morgan Mordecai Jones was born in Wales in 1865. He inherited and continued to expand, a vast wealth from his coal mining family. As a young man, he went on several bear-hunting expeditions to the wild American North West and Alaska. In 1910 Mordecai Jones purchased Clifton Lodge estate 2 miles from Athboy and moved there with his family and Koniste. Sanotic Koniste was born in Japan sometime towards the end of the 1800s. He travelled to the United States Pacific Northwest. On a trek through the wild high mountains of Washington State, he was injured and left abandoned by his travelling companions along a mountain pass. He was rescued from certain death by Mordecai Jones and became Jones’ faithful travelling companion and manservant.
Shortly after Jones’ death, Koniste was found murdered on 27 July 1913. The case remained unsolved for a century when in 2013, historian John Gilroy concluded in his book A Cry In The Morning, that Koniste’s murder had been John Connell, a farm labourer from the nearby village of Kildalkey.
Jones and Koniste are both buried in the Church of Ireland grounds alongside Mordecai’s son Ion who died in Dublin in 1976.
Athboy 100 