Geoffrey Keating (in Irish Seathrún Céitinn) is thought to have been born c.1569 in County Tipperary; for a long time Burgess was believed his birthplace, but more recently an argument has been advanced for Moorstown Castle, a tower house then occupied by the Keating family. In 1603 he sailed for France where he attended the recently-founded Irish College in Bordeaux. On finishing his studies and being an ordained priest, he returned to Ireland where he took up clerical duties in a parish near Cahir. Over the next twenty years he wrote his major work, completed around 1634, Foras Feasa ar Éirinn (The Foundation of Knowledge on Ireland, commonly known as The History of Ireland). Written in Irish, this traced the evolution of Keating’s native country from the creation of the world until the arrival of the Anglo-Normans (who were among the author’s own forebears). The manuscript, of which the first version was only published in English in 1723 (and the full text in Irish only at the start of the last century) drew on a wide variety of sources, some of which no longer exist and others of which can be deemed pseudo-historical. Much of the content is therefore open to revision. However, as Bernadette Cunningham wrote in 2001, during a time of enormous social upheaval and political unrest, ‘Keating’s portrayal of Ireland as an ancient and worthy kingdom had enormous attractions for his contemporaries. It told the story of the kingdom of Ireland at a time when the idea of an Irish kingdom mattered a great deal to contemporaries. In consequence, though it may tell us relatively little about early Irish history that cannot be gleaned from other sources, it reveals a great deal about Keating’s own seventeenth-century world.’

Little is known about Keating’s life, or even when and where he died. With regard to the latter, a plaque above the doorcase of a mortuary chapel at Tubrid, County Tipperary carries the following inscription in Latin: ‘Orate Pro Aiabs P. Eugenu: Duhy Vic de Tybrud: et D: Doct Galf: Keating huis Sacelli Fundatoru: necno et pro oibs alusta sacerd. quam laicis quoru corpa in eod: jacet sa A Dom 1644.’ (Pray for the souls of Father Eugenius Duhy, Vicar of Tybrud, and of Geoffrey Keating, D.D., Founders of this Chapel ; and also for all others, both Priests and Laics whose bodies lie in the same chapel. In the year of our Lord 1644.) Accordingly, we know he was dead by this time but the exact date and death remain a mystery. Now roofless and in one corner of a substantial graveyard, the chapel still thanks to the Roman Catholic priest and historian Patrick Power who in the early years of the last century championed the memory of Keating, and arranged to have steel rods inserted into the building to ensure its walls did not collapse.

To the immediate north of the chapel at Tubrid stand the remains of another building, St John’s a former Church of Ireland church thought to have been built on the site of an older place of worship: he buttressed walls of the nave suggest these might even have been retained from the earlier building. Turrets with conical caps stand at each corner of the main body of the church, while the tower has four capped octagonal towers. Many sources (such as http://www.buildingsofireland.ie) give a date of 1819-20 for the church’s construction, meaning it comes from the period when the Board of First Fruits was at its most active. However, the Representative Church Body Library (in effect the archives for the Church of Ireland) holds a number of drawings of the building signed by James Pain and dated 1835: these show exterior and interior ground plans and elevations. In 1823 Pain had been appointed architect to the Board of First Fruits for Munster (responsible for all churches and glebe houses in the province) and he continued to work for the board and its successor, the Ecclesiastical Commission, until at least 1843. Therefore one may assume the church was designed by his office and is later than the date usually given. (It is not listed in David Lee’s 2005 monograph on the architect, but on the other hand the author advises that not all churches attributable to Pain are listed in the relevant appendix and recommends consultation of the RCB Library archives). Drawings of the same church also survive from the office of Welland & Gillespie, architects to the Ecclesiastical Commission from 1860 until the disestablishment of the Church of Ireland ten years later, but whether these plans were executed or not is unclear. St John’s, Tubrid ceased to be used for services in 1919 and, like its older neighbor, now stands a roofless shell.