Garranard Post Office and The Vicarage

Garranard Post Office, was the main post office of the surrounding area up until the early part of this millennium, when the postal services were located to Mitchell's Centra supermarket in the village. The building itself was originally constructed by Rev. William H Brushe, in the early 1850's as a residence, when he became the first Anglican curate of the parish in almost two hundred years.

Rev Brushe was an ambitious and abrasive missionary, who believed that the post-Great Famine years were opportune to convert the local catholic tenantry. He persuaded the Palmer estate to build a school house which also functioned as a church in the field to the south, on the opposite riverbank. There he taught classes and also held services in the cruciform shaped building. This adjacent townland of Ballinagur (now Ballynagor) once held a thriving community of Anglican farmers, and was already served by a Baptist school. This led to contention between Rev. Brushe and the in-situ protestants of Baptist and Presbyterians who believed his brand of zealous missionary work was alienating the cordiality between them and their Catholic neighbours.

Not to be outdone, the local parish priest, Fr. McNamara built a National School house within a stone's throw of both schools and also became embroiled in the argument over the Anglican clerics’ 'proselytising'.

Despite an encouraging start, the decline of the local protestant community, coupled with a lack of Catholic interest, saw the end of Brushe's mission in the 1870's and the schoolhouse - church fell into ruin with the sale of the vicarage to a local farmer. The ruins of the school-house - church were symbolically used by Canon Hegarty as the foundations of the present parochial house in the 1930's. He is reported to have said - as the last cartload of stones from the protestant building was tipped into the foundation trenches - 'You're down now and you'll stay down!'. No trace of the building remains.