Site of Church, Tikerlevan, Co. Kilkenny
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In a pasture in County Kilkenny, somewhere beneath the grass, a church has effectively vanished.
By 1989, when the site was examined, the only indication that anything had ever stood there was a slight rise in the ground, the kind of gentle swelling that a casual walker might not even notice. No walls, no rubble scatter, no visible stonework; just a field doing its best to look like an ordinary field.
The site's existence was recorded in the Ordnance Survey Letters of 1839, a remarkable series of antiquarian notes compiled as surveyors moved across Ireland gathering local historical and topographical information. The relevant entry, later published by O'Flanagan in 1930, mentions church sites in two townlands together: Coolroe and Tigh Keerlevan, the older Irish form of the name that survives today as Tikerlevan. Beyond that paired reference, the historical record offers little else. No dedication, no founding date, no account of when the structure fell or was cleared away. The church had already receded into the category of "site" before anyone thought to write much about it.