Aghold, anciently Aghowle and in Irish manuscripts Acha Abhla, Achadhabhla or Achadh-n-abhall means the “field of the apple trees.” According to Rev. James Graves in an article in the R.S.A.I. Journal of April 1833, St. Finian founded his first Monastic Community in the early part of the 6th century at Aghowle before moving to Clonard, Co. Meath where he founded his best known community.
The present church at Aghowle was built in the early 12th century and remains in a remarkably good state of preservation. The church has two notable Romanesque East Windows and a finely chiselled West Door. The church was used as the Church of Ireland Church until 1716-17 when the present church of St. Michael’s was built. Today the ruins of Aghowle church are vested in the Office of Public Works and they are a National Monument.
The first stone of St. Michael’s Church was laid in the year 1716 by the Rev. Thomas Baron, Rector of the Parish. It appears that the old church of Aghowle had fallen into disrepair and as it did not occupy a central position in the Parishes of Aghold, Mullinacuffe, “Creecreen and Liscoleman it was decided to build a new church. At a public Vestry meeting on 2nd May 1721 application was made to the Privy Council of Ireland for an order “for the removal of the Old Church of Aghold, being in a ruinous condition, to the town of Coolkenno, on a plot of ground commonly called the Rock Park.”
The Rock Park site was “given and conveyed be deed by the Hon. Thomas Wentworth, the father and Thomas Wentworth, the son” on April 8th 1715. The name St. Michael, was chosen by the Patron, Mr. John Nickson, representing the Hon. Thomas Wentworth. The new church was consecrated by the Right Rev. Josiah Hort, Lord Bishop of Ferns and Leighlin on the 29th September 1722, St. Michael’s Feast Day.
The total cost of the building of the new church was £150. The Vestry minutes of 21st December 1716 tell us that the sums subscribed were not sufficient to finish the building and twelve shillings per hundred acres was “assessed and apploted throughout the Union.”
On March 6th 1728, the Select Vestry decided to add a gallery to the church and to raise £6 to do so. It is not clear if this was done at the time but a gallery is recorded as being built in 1748. A new gate was erected in 1758 and in 1775 a porch was added to the church. A gallery was built to the north of the church in 1791 by Jacob Halpenny costing ten guineas. In 1794 a church wall was built by Edward Fullam at a cost of four guineas. The church was re-roofed in 1806.
On 1st March 1814 it was “unanimously resolved that a sum of one hundred pounds sterling be laid on the Union at large for the purpose of an addition to the Church – forty feet long by twenty two feet broad or thereabouts.” The building of the addition was committed to Edward Styles in April 1814 at an estimated cost of £213. It is not clear where this addition to the Church was built but it may have been the South Transept as the Vestry appears to have been built at the same time.
In 1894 St. Michael’s Church underwent a considerable renovation under the direction of Mr. J.F. Fuller (F.S.A.), Great Brunswick Street, Dublin. The works included replacing the external roof, re-plastering the church walls with cement and Acaun sand, painting the newly plastered walls, removing the old pews and replacing them with pews of pitch pine either side of one central aisle, new floor tiles, the erection of a very handsome carved oak pulpit and the erection of a new East Window of cut granite stone and cathedral glass. The works cost the princely sum of £700 which was raised by subscription and various fund raising activities including an evening of musical entertainment at Shillelagh by Mr. Percy French.