Catholic Church (in Ruins), Coolrevagh, Co. Galway
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Churches & Chapels
A small ruined church in Coolrevagh, County Galway, contains something that no builder planned and no craftsman carved.
Low on the interior wall of the south-western gable, just beneath a flat-headed window set slightly off-centre, the natural fissures in the stonework happen to form a rough cross. Whether or not anyone noticed it during the building, it sits there still, a coincidence of geology that takes on a different quality inside a place of worship.
The building itself is modest in scale, a rectangular structure measuring roughly 12.75 metres long and 4.25 metres wide, oriented north-east to south-west, and probably dating from the eighteenth century. It stands on the western side of an old laneway, about a hundred metres west of the Grange River. The south-eastern wall, where the main doorway sits roughly at its midpoint, has been reduced largely to foundations, but the gables survive in fair condition. The north-eastern gable retains a roughly square window with a slightly segmental head, a gentle curve rather than a full arch, and immediately below it there are traces of an altar abutting the wall. Patches of lime render cling to both the interior and exterior faces of the masonry, a reminder that the bare rubble visible today was once a finished, plastered surface.
For a congregation in eighteenth-century Connacht, a building like this would have been a significant local effort. Catholic church-building in Ireland during that period was constrained by the lingering effects of the Penal Laws, which had long restricted Catholic worship and the construction of Catholic buildings. Churches from this era tend to be plain and functional rather than elaborate, which makes the accidental cross in the stonework all the more quietly striking. It was not put there, it was simply found.