A Visit to Kells, Co. Meath

My husband and I just returned from a trip to Ireland. We aimed to visit all of our ancestral hometowns, though we fell a bit short. There were too many things to see, too little time, and no street signs in Dublin. (The hours we spent driving in circles or many miles in the wrong direction knocked at least one destination off of our itinerary.)

We met some cousins, and tried to take lots of pictures of the places we did visit, so I'm going to devote a post to each hometown we visited. This one is for Kells, Co. Meath.

My Mulvan(e)y and Rothwell families are from Kells. James Mulvany married Bridget Rothwell and John Mulvany married Ann Rothwell in Kells, Co. Meath in 1850 and 1851, respectively. I still have not nailed down who any of their parents were, or whether/how the two Mulvanys and two Rothwells were related to each other. I wasn't there to do research - I mostly just wanted to see the town, get a feel for it. I thought I might ask around to see if there were anywhere that a historically-minded visitor might like to see, or try to find the graveyard and take pictures of any Mulvany or Rothwell stones - even though I didn't know what first names I was looking for.

It was a Sunday afternoon when we arrived, so the entire town was dead. There was almost nothing open, and people were scarce. However, we took these pictures:

We missed the "Welcome to Kells" street sign, but got a picture of this in the window of the local bookstore.

Town of Kells

Town of Kells

We did visit the ancient monastic enclosure and the Kells Round Tower, and looked around the cemetery on the off-chance that we'd run across some Mulvany or Rothwell headstones. Their dates ranged from the 1700s to the much more recent. We didn't notice until we left graveyard that the church - and thus probably the cemetery - was Church of Ireland. My people were Catholics. 

On the way to the round tower and St. Columba's Church.

Kells Round Tower

Gravestones

Ben neglected to tell me that it had stopped raining.