St Anne's Church, Killough EHOD 2024

About

St Anne’s Church is probably the most prominent building in Killough with its striking location on the edge of the bay. A church was built on the site at the beginning of the 18th century by Lord Bangor of Castleward who had developed the village as his estate port. The present church was built was in about 1810. The steeple of the church acted as a navigation point for sailors during the years of sail and the graveyard contains the burials of those who perished in shipwrecks near the village.  

One headstone commemorates the crew of the Menapia  which sank on the 13th  of December 1836. The headstone records that there was ‘Not one surviving to tell the melancholy tale’. The ship had left Liverpool two days earlier bound for her home port of Waterford with a cargo of sugar and salt. A south-easterly gale blew the ship off course and at about 10.30 that night of the 13th she was impaled on the rocks at St John’s Point and broke up soon afterwards. The bodies of the crew were washed up over the next few days and brought to Killough for burial.

The graveyard contains the burials of some notable citizens of Killough. Among those is Charles Sheils who made a fortune in the textile trade and bequeathed his wealth to build the splendid alms houses on the edge of the village along with others in Armagh, Carrickfergus, Dungannon and Rathmines in Dublin. Rex McCandless, the noted inventor of the flying autogyro and motor bike designer, is also buried there.  

Church war memorials in Britain and Ireland are almost invariably dedicated to those who died in the first or second world wars. Killough is unusual in that the war memorial in St Annes is dedicated to a Killough soldier who died in the Korean war. Ralph Cumine-Parkinson was last seen alive when he took cover behind a burning truck in a skirmish on the Chinese border in 1950. His body was never found.

The church was recently repaired and redecorated with generous support from The National Churches Trust.