Catholic Church (in ruins), Blackhall, Co. Wexford
Co. Wexford |
Churches & Chapels
On an 1839 Ordnance Survey map of County Wexford, a small building is marked in italic lettering as 'R.
C. Chapel (in ruins)', italic being the convention cartographers used to indicate antiquities or structures already fallen from use. By the time anyone thought to survey the ground carefully, there was almost nothing left to find.
What survives at Blackhall today is a foundation course, the lowest row of stones that once defined the base of a wall, tracing a rectangle measuring roughly 5.9 metres east to west and 4 metres north to south. That is a very modest footprint, more consistent with a simple rural Mass house than a formal chapel, and local tradition holds it to be the church in question. The building sits within an old farm complex on the western side of a minor road, in the shallow valley of a small stream that runs roughly north-north-west to south-south-east. Archaeological assessment and testing carried out in 2012, directed by Stafford, produced no related material, and there is no evidence of burial or of any enclosing boundary around the structure. Without those features, even its identification as a church remains cautious rather than certain. About 60 metres to the south-south-west lies Lady's Well, a holy well dedicated to the Virgin Mary, a type of site commonly found in association with early Catholic devotional practice in Ireland, particularly during the Penal era when outdoor and informal places of worship carried real significance.
The proximity of the well to this fragmentary building is suggestive, even if archaeology has so far offered nothing definitive. Together they point to a small, localised pattern of religious practice in a quiet corner of Wexford, the kind that left few records and fewer visible traces.