Ballydrinan Church (in ruins), Ballydrinan, Co. Tipperary

Co. Tipperary |

Churches & Chapels

Ballydrinan Church (in ruins), Ballydrinan, Co. Tipperary

What survives of this medieval church at Ballydrinan is, in most respects, barely enough to read as a building at all.

The east gable has largely fallen, the west gable barely clears a metre and a half in places, and the interior is choked with rubble and vegetation. Yet the shell that remains, sitting on the south side of a working graveyard on a steep east-facing slope above the River Suir, still communicates something of its original form with quiet stubbornness.

The structure measures roughly 8.55 metres by 17.8 metres externally, built from roughly coursed limestone rubble, the kind of construction common to small rural churches across Tipperary from the early medieval period onward. Ivy has taken firm hold of what remains. The north wall is the most informative survivor, standing to about 3.5 metres at its eastern end, where a single-light window is still visible. At the western end of the same wall, a straight-sided opening just over a metre wide is thought to have been the original doorway, though no dressed stone surrounds remain to confirm its character. The south wall holds along much of its length but includes a clearly later section of rebuild, a narrower stretch of wall inserted about 4.15 metres from the southwest corner, suggesting repair or modification at some point after the original construction. A window embrasure survives partially at the east end of the south wall, its western side intact while the wall to the east of it has collapsed and been patched. The River Suir runs roughly 200 metres to the east, with a stream closer still, and the whole setting has the quality of a place that has simply been left to find its own level.

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