First Communicants from local primary schools were brought together for Duneane’s 2025 Corpus Christi Mass and Eucharistic Procession. The Parish of Duneane in Co. Antrim will mount and bless a primitive Holy Water font on Sunday, November 8, discovered on a Lough Neagh monastic site a few years ago.
Speaking to this newspaper about the restoration process, historian Patrick McAteer said the font was discovered on the Middle Island in Lough Neagh, which is believed to have been an early monastic settlement from the era of St Patrick.
“There was always a memory that there was a monastery there. The story that was handed down of the font was that it was in a hedge somewhere.” Some years ago the font was found and removed, and identified on a farm in Carlane.
Mr McAteer described the rock as a ballaun stone, coming from the Irish word for bowl. While archaeologists aren’t certain of their origins, Mr McAteer said the ballaun stones “seemed to have a lot of status associated with them” and are often found in monastic sites.