Architectural fragment, Fennor, Co. Tipperary

Co. Tipperary |

Ritual/Ceremonial

Architectural fragment, Fennor, Co. Tipperary

Set into the western wall of a walled garden near Glebe House in Fennor, County Tipperary, there is a pointed limestone doorway that has no business being where it is.

It is a late medieval arch, carefully reconstructed in what is now a garden boundary, far from whatever building it once sealed. It stands just under two metres tall and just under a metre wide, its proportions still trim and purposeful, its stonework in good condition save for one voussoir, the wedge-shaped stone near the crown of the arch, that has slipped slightly out of alignment on the southern side. A small rectangular depression survives on the inner rebate, the recessed ledge where a door would have sat, and is thought to mark the socket of a locking mechanism. Someone, at some point, cared enough to move this arch and put it back together correctly.

The doorway dates to the fifteenth or sixteenth century and is dressed with a chamfered surround, a bevelled moulding running around the opening, that terminates differently at each end. On the northern side it ends in an angled runout stop, cutting away cleanly; on the southern side it finishes with a broach stop, a small pyramidal projection that arrests the moulding. These details are characteristic of late medieval ecclesiastical stonework in Ireland, and the doorway is almost certainly not a garden feature by origin. The medieval church of Fennor stands roughly 180 metres to the east, and both of its opposing doorways, one in the north wall and one in the south, are missing. The fit is difficult to ignore. At some point, probably during the construction or improvement of the Glebe House grounds, one of those church doorways was extracted and relocated here, set into a garden wall where it has remained ever since.

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