placenamesAgher
Achair
A rare Thomas Jervais window, Jonathan Swift’s rectorship and a surviving Winter family lodge give Agher several precise historical connections.
The name
A reliable full-name meaning has not been established here. The recorded Irish and English forms are given without an unsupported translation.
Recorded forms
- Achair · Irish · main form · validated name
- Agher · English · main form
Place & story
The Jervais window
The east window of Agher church depicts Saint Paul preaching at Athens, after Raphael. Attributed to about 1770, it was made by Dublin glass painter Thomas Jervais for Dangan Castle and transferred to Agher after the house’s fire in 1809. Conservators at the York Glaziers Trust found unusually varied techniques, including silver staining and layers of painted or coloured glass used to deepen colour. Their investigation places the window within Jervais’s experimental practice, making it valuable evidence of eighteenth-century glass painting as well as an object with a history of removal and survival. [2]
Swift’s rectorship and later care
Jonathan Swift was rector of Agher from 1699 until his death in 1745, a connection remembered by the Rathmolyon Union of Parishes. The church and its contents also acquired a modern conservation story. In 2016 the Jervais window was taken to York for cleaning, repair and re-leading, then returned with protective glazing and a specially made frame. The parish’s Heritage Week account credits support from the Irish Georgian Society, Heritage Council, Built Heritage Investment Scheme and local vestry for the work. [3]
The Winter gate lodge
A red-brick gate lodge dated 1894 survives from the Agher estate, although the main house has disappeared. Its inscription names James Sanderson Winter, who also built or rebuilt the nearby church and school. Bays, an oriel and a porch give the small building an irregular outline, while decorative brick eaves and terracotta roof cresting add colour and detail. Known as Church View, it preserves part of the estate’s later architectural character beside the other Winter-associated buildings. [4]
Geographic information
- Place type
- Population centre
- County
- Meath
- Barony
- Deece Upper
- Civil parish
- Agher
- Civil parish
- Gallow
- Coordinates
- 53.46651, -6.75006 (approximate)
- Logainm ID
- 1414630 ↗
Sources & further reading
- Logainm.ie — Agher. Place names and geographic record, licensed under CC BY 4.0.
- The Jervais Window, Agher Parish Church, Ireland · York Glaziers Trust
- Agher Church: Thomas Jervais Window, Heritage Week event · Rathmolyon Union of Parishes / Heritage Council
- Agher gate lodge, record 14404808 · National Inventory of Architectural Heritage
Name record retrieved 2026-10-25 · Source record modified 2025-01-10. How this page was prepared.