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A couple of miles south of Trim is LARACOR , the place where Jonathan Swift lived during his association with Esther "Stella" Johnson and where he was rector (with very little rectitude) from 1699 to 1714. No trace of his time here survives, however. Two miles further is Dangan Castle , the family home of the Duke of Wellington, now no more than a shell and again with little trace of its past. Ambrosio O'Higgins, father of Bernardo O'Higgins, liberator of Chile, was born here. Perhaps of more interest as an excursion is the Irish-speaking community of RATHCAIRN , near Athboy, eight miles northwest of Trim, where traditional Irish entertainment may well be taking place. The community was uprooted from Connemara by the Land Commission between 1935 and 1940 and replanted here in Meath as a Gaeltacht . The population is about three hundred and fifty and increasing, a unique statistic as most other Irish-speaking communities are rapidly decreasing in numbers. Not far away, in a field beside the Athboy-Navan road, is the Rathmore Church and Cross ( An Rath Mhor Teampall agus Cros ). The church, built by the Plunkett family in the fifteenth century, is a fine example of the flowering of an Anglo-Norman culture sympathetic to the native Irish which the Tudor conquest succeeded in eradicating, and is full of interesting stone carvings which are worth leaving the road to take a look at. There's an octagonal shaft from a baptismal font, a violated Norman sarcophagus in the fortified tower, a decorated altar stone, the stalk of an ancient cross and other stonework. Note the corbelled roof in the other tower, now trapped as a pigeon-cote.
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