Our Parish

This large mid-Clare parish includes medieval Kilmaley plus the Inch district of Dromcliffe, which was transferred to it towards the end of the eighteenth century. In 1704 the registered priest for Kilmaley was a Fr. WilIiam Freeman, while in 1731 one mass house was listed in the parish, together with one priest, whose name we are not told. In the early nineteenth century Kilmaley and Inch had one extraordinary parish priest, Fr. Colman Hynes, who had been forcibly enlisted in the French Revolutionary Army during the 1790s, and after escaping home to Ireland was promptly jailed for complicity in the Clare uprising of 1799. In later years (he died In 1837) he did what he could to prevent his flock from becoming involved in agrarian crime.

There are three churches in our parish: Church of St. John the Baptist, Our Lady of the Wayside Church, Inch and Kilmaley, St. Michael Archangel Church, Connolly.