Church, Fedamore, Co. Limerick
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Churches & Chapels
A disused Church of Ireland building in the small County Limerick village of Fedamore sits on ground that has been used for Christian worship since at least the medieval period, and probably considerably longer.
What makes it quietly compelling is not the 18th-century structure itself but the layered history underneath it, a succession of names, landlords, abbeys, and legal disputes that stretches back across eight centuries of documentary record, with the physical church acting as a kind of full stop placed over all of it.
The antiquarian Thomas Westropp, writing in 1904 and 1905, pieced together the documentary trail with some care. Around 1185, the settlement was granted by John, Earl of Mortain, the future King John of England, to Magio Abbey. By 1237 it appears in records as Fedemer, and subsequent entries track the shifting spellings and ownership disputes that characterise so many medieval Irish parishes. In 1317, a legal suit was brought by one W. de Cammile against Richard de Clare over Fedemer, suggesting the land was contested and valuable. By 1410, the place was recorded as Feadamuir, with a dedication to St. John the Baptist, and the name continued to mutate through Fedamor, ffedamoore, and Fedamore et Ballone across the 15th, 16th, and 17th centuries. The Church of Ireland church that now occupies the site was built in 1740 on the footprint of the older medieval structure, as recorded by O'Kelly in 1943. Inside, two monuments survive: one to John Croker of Ballinagarde, who died in 1717 at the age of 93, and another to John Heart, with dates given as 1741 and 1736.
Fedamore village lies roughly twelve kilometres south of Limerick city. The church is no longer in active use, so access to the interior and the monuments within it may be limited depending on the condition of the building and any local arrangements in place. The churchyard surrounding the structure is the more reliably accessible part of the site, and it is worth taking time to look at the fabric of the building itself, particularly where the 18th-century construction meets or incorporates older stonework. The monument to John Croker is of particular interest given his age at death, which was remarkable for the period, and it serves as an unexpectedly personal detail within a site whose history is otherwise told largely through legal records and shifting place-name spellings.