Chapel, Kilglass, Co. Sligo
Co. Sligo |
Churches & Chapels
A late sixteenth-century parish church whose walls still stand to their full height is unusual enough in the Irish countryside, but the chapel at Kilglass, Co. Sligo carries an older claim beneath its stonework.
Local tradition holds that this low rise in pasture, now occupied by the ruined church and its subrectangular walled graveyard, was once the site of an early monastery founded by St. Molaisse, a saint associated with several early Christian foundations in the west of Ireland. That connection cannot be confirmed in the fabric of what survives, but it lends the place a longer shadow than its present appearance might suggest.
The building itself measures just over twenty metres east to west and a little over seven metres north to south, with walls nearly a metre thick. The detailing rewards a slow walk around the exterior. The south wall carries a doorway with an external pointed two-centred arch and a flat segmental arch on the inner face, a combination that reflects the transitional architectural taste of the period. Three windows along the same wall echo that almost-flat-headed segmental form, while a single narrow slit opening with a splayed rear, closer to the east end, let in a thin blade of light. At the east end of the south wall, a large rectangular recess cut into the stonework is likely a piscina, the shallow basin used in Catholic ritual for disposing of water used during Mass. Two further openings on the north wall have been blocked up, though they remain visible beneath the ivy that now covers much of that end. There is also structural evidence that the west end of the building once carried a second storey, interpreted as a priest's residence, a reminder that post-Reformation parish churches in Ireland sometimes served as domestic as well as liturgical spaces.
Inside the shell of the church stands the tomb of James Wood, who died in 1692. A relative had it restored in 1861, and it remains the most legible human detail within the ruin, connecting the late seventeenth century to the mid-Victorian period in a single carved stone.