As I turn off the busy A4 road outside Maguiresbridge and head along a narrow hedged road, you first glimpse in the distance the Normanesque tower of a now modern church.

This is something I never tire of.

Sat in rolling drumlins, this ecclesiastical site sits almost anonymously in the middle of nowhere, but yet, it’s somewhere.

The site of Aghavea is believed to be one of the oldest in Fermanagh.

In 2000, Ruairi Baoill, from Queen’s University, Belfast, was tasked with an excavation before the erection of a new church hall on the church periphery.

He described the area as a multi-period site of multi-period significance. They uncovered bowl furnaces showing evidence of smithing, various enclosure ditches, a metalled road leaving to the church, evidence of sheep and pigs having been roasted, a ditch with an internal palisade, various amounts of coarse ware, pottery including Souterain pottery dating from early- to post-Medieval Ireland, and an English silver coin believed to date from the first quarter of the 14th Century from the reigns of Edward I, II, III.

Also, Lithics expert, Brian Sloan of Queen’s, recorded artefacts showing evidence of pre-Christian activity such as worked flint and a plano convex knife probably dating to the early Neolithic era.

Does this suggest with the feature of a large circular embankment, very noticeable in the north part of the graveyard, a pre-Christian site?

Aghavea is believed to have been associated in the early Medieval period with St. Lasair, the daughter of St. Ronan.

We already know of an inscribed stone, recovered from a graveyard wall, currently in the National Museum in Dublin, which in Irish reads: “A prayer for Dunchad, the little priest.”

Later on, we have text on the Annals of the Four Masters and the Annals of Ulster, a period of the rise of the Maguire chieftains to Ecclesiastical power.

Over a 70-year period the church is recorded as having been burnt down in 1458, 1487 and 1507, including valuable books [lost in] a turbulent period in Medieval Ireland.

Further recorded is that in 1532, Cormac O’Dhulltachain, a herenagh (lay official of church lands), dies, and by 1609-10 on Bodley maps, the church is shown as roofless.

The older part of the graveyard has many interesting headstones and slabs. Just two of interest belong to John Macken and Jeremiah Jordan.

When it comes to Fermanagh, poets are seldom known, and scarce, yet interred beneath this impressive stone edifice within the burial ground of Aghavea lies John Macken,

The eldest son of Richard Macken, who hailed from the nearby village of Brookeborough, John Macken co-founded the Enniskillen Chronicle/The Erne Packet in 1808, who contributed both poetry and prose.

John later served in the navy as a sailor and was even present at the bombardment of Algiers (1816).

He included the triumph and horrors of these times in his book, ‘The Harp of the Desert’, [the printing] of which he paid for himself under the pseudonym, ‘Ismael Fitzadam’.

The editor for Literary Gazette likened Macken’s poetry to “combining Scott and Byron most admirably together”.

Yet despite the praise and capabilities, he never received much success. In poor health, he returned to his homeland and managed to complete two more books of poetry before his death.

Born in 1830, Jeremiah Jordan hailed from a large and humble farming family, and was the eldest son of Samuel Jordon in the townland of Tattenbar.

He attended the National School of Mullinaburtlin in The Knocks, and then attended Portora Royal, Enniskillen.

Jeremiah opposed the Earl of Enniskillen (Cole) and the Earl of Erne (Crichton) in local and parliamentary elections.

During the 1870s, he joined the Home Rule League, the Land League, the Tenant’s Association, and the Temperance in support for Irish Nationalism movements.

Jeremiah spoke alongside Issac Butt – founder of the Home Rule League/Irish Parliamentary Party – in 1873 at a meeting in Enniskillen.

He was an MP for West Clare from 1885-1892, and again for South Meath in 1893-1895, and South Fermanagh from 1895-1910.

Jeremiah died in High Street, Enniskillen in 1911, aged 81 years.

In 1800, the Church was rebuilt under the direction of Reverend Webster and Henry Leslie, and now stands in splendid order – a recognition of its longstanding history, in part tradition of the Abrahamic religion.

Compiled by George Elliott (Historian) and Robert Elliott (Poet).