Stamullen () is a village in

County Meath County Meath (; gle, Contae na Mí or simply ) is a county in the Eastern and Midland Region of Ireland, within the province of Leinster. It is bordered by Dublin to the southeast, Louth to the northeast, Kildare to the south, Offaly to the ...

Ireland Ireland ( ; ga, Éire ; Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean, in north-western Europe. It is separated from Great Britain to its east by the North Channel, the Irish Sea, and St George's Channel. Ireland is the s ...

on the border with

County Dublin "Action to match our speech" , image_map = Island_of_Ireland_location_map_Dublin.svg , map_alt = map showing County Dublin as a small area of darker green on the east coast within the lighter green background of ...

. It lies just off the

M1 motorway The M1 motorway connects London to Leeds, where it joins the A1(M) near Aberford, to connect to Newcastle. It was the first inter-urban motorway to be completed in the UK; the first motorway in the country was the Preston By-pass, which ...

some 35 km north of Dublin City and beside the

Delvin River The River Delvin ( ga, An Ailbhine) is a river of northern County Dublin, about long and forming much of the Dublin-Meath boundary; it is thus largely under the responsibility of Fingal County Council, sometimes shared with Meath County Counci ...

. In the late 1990s and early 21st century, it expanded significantly with the development of numerous housing estates in the area.

History

Evidence of ancient settlement in the area includes the ruins of St Patrick's parish church (dated to the 13th century) and the nearby chapel of St Christopher (dated to the 15th century). Part of the Preston chapel of St Patrick's survives, including the tomb of William Preston, 2nd

Viscount Gormanston Viscount Gormanston is a title in the Peerage of Ireland created in 1478 and held by the head of the Preston family, which hailed from Lancashire. It is the oldest vicomital title in the British Isles; the holder is Premier Viscount of Irel ...

, and his second wife Eleanor Dowdall. The ruins of these structures lie within Stamullen graveyard, which contains a number of unusual gravestones, including a

cadaver monument A cadaver monument or ''transi'' (or memento mori monument, Latin for "reminder of death") is a type of church monument to deceased persons featuring a sculpted effigy of a skeleton or an emaciated, even decomposing, dead body. It was particularly ...

(dated to c.1450) within St Christopher's chapel. In October 1999, a real IRA training camp and underground firing range were discovered near the village.

Amenities

The village contains a

supermarket A supermarket is a self-service shop offering a wide variety of food, beverages and household products, organized into sections. This kind of store is larger and has a wider selection than earlier grocery stores, but is smaller and more limit ...

, pub, three hairdressers, barbers, veterinary clinic, butcher, fast food outlet, laundromat and a coffee shop. A

Benedictine , image = Medalla San Benito.PNG , caption = Design on the obverse side of the Saint Benedict Medal , abbreviation = OSB , formation = , motto = (English: 'Pray and Work') , foun ...

monastery A monastery is a building or complex of buildings comprising the domestic quarters and workplaces of monastics, monks or nuns, whether living in communities or alone (hermits). A monastery generally includes a place reserved for prayer whic ...

was established in the town in 2012. This facility, the

Silverstream Priory Silverstream Priory is a Roman Catholic monastery in Stamullen, County Meath, Ireland, founded in 2012. The monastery is an autonomous diocesan priory of the Benedictine Monks of Perpetual Adoration. Mark Daniel Kirby (b. 1952) is the found ...

, falls within the

Diocese of Meath The Diocese of Meath ( ga, Deoise na Mí) is an Irish diocese which took its name after the ancient Kingdom of Meath. In the Roman Catholic Church it still exists as a separate diocese, but in the Church of Ireland it has been united with other ...

. In March 2012, two American monks moved into Silverstream House, originally built in 1843 by the Preston family (the

Viscounts Gormanston Viscount Gormanston is a title in the Peerage of Ireland created in 1478 and held by the head of the Preston family, which hailed from Lancashire. It is the oldest vicomital title in the British Isles; the holder is Premier Viscount of Ireland. ...

). The monastery's adherents celebrate the

Liturgy Liturgy is the customary public ritual of worship performed by a religious group. ''Liturgy'' can also be used to refer specifically to public worship by Christians. As a religious phenomenon, liturgy represents a communal response to and partic ...

in Latin, performs

Gregorian chant Gregorian chant is the central tradition of Western plainchant, a form of monophonic, unaccompanied sacred song in Latin (and occasionally Greek) of the Roman Catholic Church. Gregorian chant developed mainly in western and central Europe dur ...

, and Eucharistic Adoration. Stamullen has a community centre which is also home to St Patricks GAA, Stamullen Football Club, Stamullen Badminton Club, and Stamullen Bowls Club. The village is also home to the M. Donnelly Stamullen Road Club Cycling Team. A free

magazine A magazine is a periodical publication, generally published on a regular schedule (often weekly or monthly), containing a variety of content. They are generally financed by advertising, purchase price, prepaid subscriptions, or by a combinatio ...

is delivered each month to homes and businesses within the community.

Education

St. Patrick's National School, originally opened in 1954, was extended in the 1980s to increase capacity to 6 classrooms. Numbers declined for some time, but with the building boom starting in the late 1990s numbers started to climb again. A number of pre-fabs were built in advance of the granting of planning approval for a new building which opened in 2008. As of 2019, the school had an enrollment of more than 660 pupils.

Demographics

In the 20 years between the 1996 and 2016 census, the population of Stamullen had increased significantly (almost 8-fold), from 427 to 3,361 inhabitants. According to the 2016 census, more than 85% of homes in the village (869 of 1,018 households) were built between 1991 and 2010. As of the 2006 census, Stamullen then had the second-lowest percentage of people in the over 65 age group and the lowest percentage of people in the 45-64 age group in any town in Ireland with a population over 1500.

References

External links