Church, Shronahiree More, Co. Kerry

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Church, Shronahiree More, Co. Kerry

At the southern corner of a graveyard in Shronahiree More, on the Iveragh Peninsula in County Kerry, the foundations of a small church sit low in the ground, their walls reduced to little more than half a metre in height.

What draws the eye is not grandeur but precision: a doorway just fifty-five centimetres wide, set squarely at the centre of the south-western end-wall, still clearly defined after centuries of exposure. That narrowness is notable. Early Irish ecclesiastical buildings were frequently modest in scale, built for intimate use rather than congregation, and this one fits that pattern almost exactly, its internal floor space measuring only 5.5 metres by 3.2 metres.

The walls, averaging 1.4 metres thick, are built from roughly coursed sandstone blocks, and sections of the original internal facing remain visible at the northern and southern angles of the structure. Resting against the north-western wall is a long flat slab, 1.7 metres in length, which may once have served as a door lintel, the horizontal stone spanning the top of a doorway opening. Whether it fell or was laid there at some later point is not recorded, but its dimensions correspond closely enough to the doorway that the suggestion carries weight. The church was documented as part of the archaeological survey of the Iveragh Peninsula compiled by Aidan O'Sullivan and John Sheehan, published by Cork University Press in 1996, which remains a foundational reference for early ecclesiastical and secular remains across South Kerry.

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