This series of posts explores the complex legacy of the Rev William Allen Fisher, who ministered in the Church of Ireland on the Mizen Peninsula during the Famine. Using money provided through his own prodigious fund-raising, he built a church, Teampall na mBocht (Church of the Poor), in Altar townland, at Toormore, providing employment for many. He also supplied food and other necessities to his congregation and to the schools under his care. However, he was accused of buying converts with food, and those who converted became known as ‘Soupers’, still one of the worst insults in Ireland. This legacy resonates in the Mizen to this day, but it says as much about the form of Irish Catholicism that dominated Irish life since the Famine as it does about Protestant evangelism.
Saints and Soupers: the Story of Teampall na mBocht (Part 1, Introduction)
Saints and Soupers: The Story of Teampall na mBocht (Part 2, The Catholics)
Saints and Soupers: the Story of Teampall na mBocht (Part 5, Famine in Kilmoe)
Saints and Soupers: the Story of Teampall na mBocht (Part 6, Counter-Accusation)
Saints and Soupers: the Story of Teampall na mBocht (Part 7, the New Catholicism)
Roaringwater Journal 