Church (in Ruins), Bekan, Co. Mayo

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Church (in Ruins), Bekan, Co. Mayo

In the north-west corner of a graveyard at Bekan in County Mayo, a ruined church survives in a particularly lopsided way.

Its western gable still stands, rising to a length of seven metres and holding firm at a metre thick, while the three other walls of the main body have largely given way. The north wall has not simply fallen; it has been absorbed, overwritten by nineteenth and twentieth-century burials that press into the interior and have effectively erased the stonework beneath them. What was once an enclosed space is now open ground, the graves occupying the floor of a building that no longer fully exists above them.

The church itself was oriented east to west, the standard alignment for Christian worship, with the main rectangular body measuring roughly seven metres across and seventeen metres in length. What makes the plan unusual is an additional rectangular extension projecting northward from the eastern end of the north wall, giving the whole structure an L-shaped footprint. This extension, approximately six and a half metres by nine metres, is thought to have served either as a sacristy, the small room where a priest would prepare for Mass and store liturgical vessels, or as some form of accommodation. It survives only as wall footings now, with a loose scatter of displaced stone sitting on top. The eastern wall of this extension runs flush with the east gable of the main body, suggesting it was a deliberate and considered addition rather than a later improvisation.

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