Capt. Dixie CODDINGTON ⁵⁰⁸⁵

  General Notes:

Skerries, otherwise called Holmpatrick, implying in its Saxon "holm" its character of harbour, and certainly reported by Holinshed as one of the chief havens of Ireland, but at present it assumes no appearance to justify the erection of such a battery. The village, however, is a pleasing object, and its broad street diverging into two others of equal breadth, somewhat in the shape of a Y, its cleanly appearance, its church, chapel, schools and mills, its fleet of wherries animating its bay, its fine strand and downs overhanging the water, and on Sundays and holidays enlivened by groups of the rural beaus and belles of this little "Fair port," the blue sea, and the adjacent islands cannot fail to gratify the visitor. It is the most considerable [441] fishing village on the east coast, and is likely to be much improved by the proposed Drogheda Railway.

The church is a very plain structure, for the repairs of which the Ecclesiastical Commissioners have granted £63 12s. 2d. Within it are three mural monuments, one to Mr. Dixie Coddington of Holmpatrick, who died in 1728, one to Mr. Weston, who died in 1751, and another to Mr. Hamilton of Sheephill, who died in 1800. In the graveyard is an ancient tombstone to the memory of Elizabeth Finglas, wife of Thomas Hussey of Holmpatrick, who died in 1577, another to Richard de la Hoyde of Lough Shinny, in 1587. There are also monuments commemorative of the Coddingtons and the Woods of Milverton, some to the crew and passengers of a ship, that was wrecked some years since on the neighbouring rocks, and a tombstone to Richard Toole, blacksmith, who died in 1719, remarkable for the curious devices of his trade which are carved upon it. There is likewise a very old stone, with a now unintelligible inscription sculptured in alto relievo on the shaft of a cross that extends over its whole length, possibly designed to commemorate some lordly prior of this house. Nor was it ill suited to the reflections of the scene, that a rosy cherub babe, in laughing infancy, was spreading itself over that prostrate monument of the long departed, and a group of older but as thoughtless urchins were clustered round an adjoining headstone; spelling its broad characters, or vaulting over the sodded arch that flowered at its base.

Dixie married Anne CODDINGTON, daughter of John CODDINGTON and Anne STEARNE, on 22 Dec 1686 in Armagh, , Armagh, Northern Ireland. (Anne CODDINGTON was born in 1670 and died on 2 Sep 1736.)