Richard’s son, Major Roger West was buried in the chancel of Arklow Church on 3rd April 1686. Some West graves can be found in Killough Parish Church and at Killyleagh Presbyterian Church.
There are several older West graves in Saul Church Graveyard, from the Quoile and Clogher branches of the family, including one Masonic headstone from 1786 for a John West ‘of ye quol’, a large horizontal slab-stone, and inside the church itself, there is a memorial plaque, also Masonic. This memorial plaque was removed from the previous church and built into the wall of the new St Patrick’s Memorial Church in the 1930’s; however, the organ now sadly obstructs this plaque, and possibly one other, completely from view.
Of his ancestors buried at Saul, John Parkinson wrote:
“Within the precincts of this holy place
The ashes of my dead forefathers lie.
Of Irish stock, but came from English race
They rest in peace beneath an Irish sky.
Within these walls, upon this sacred sod
They often raised their voice in praise of God.
A stout and sturdy race of yeomen bold
With reverent hand and heart they tilled the soil
Within the vanished centuries of old
They lived and died beneath the spreading Quoile
Within the western wind that fans my brow
I seem to feel their spirits moving now.”
John ‘Yehya-en-Nasr’ Parkinson, 1908
