Church, Aglish, Co. Kerry
Co. Kerry |
Churches & Chapels
Within a single graveyard in County Kerry, two ruined churches stand in close proximity, one directly to the south of the other, representing different congregations, different centuries, and different fates.
The more recent of the two, a former Church of Ireland parish church, met its end not through neglect or suppression but through a single violent storm in 1866, when its west tower collapsed inward, tore through the roof, and left the building beyond use. The walls still stand, but their upper courses have been knocked inwards over time, so the interior is now entirely filled with rubble, earth, and creeping vegetation.
The Church of Ireland building was constructed to include an octagonal tower, erected in 1822 and supported on a first-floor brick vault above a square one-storey base. Architectural drawings made by James Pain in 1835 record the church as it appeared in its working years, within the Diocese of Ardfert. The stonework throughout is dressed rubble limestone, with tooled quoins at the corners and chamfered ashlar limestone surrounds framing the doorways. A blocked square-headed doorway with label moulding survives on the west elevation of the bell tower, and the south wall of the nave retains the bases of three windows, their sills still legible despite the collapse above. Immediately to the south, the older church, which was already a ruin when the first Ordnance Survey maps were made between 1829 and 1841, survives only as an L-shaped section of rubble wall rising to about 1.5 metres. Where the later building represents a particular moment of nineteenth-century Protestant ecclesiastical architecture in Kerry, this fragment is older and harder to date, its origins less clearly documented.
The two ruins sit in the northern portion of the graveyard, and the contrast between them is immediately apparent on the ground. The Church of Ireland building retains enough of its footprint, including the nave, a small northeast extension, and the tower base, to give a clear sense of its original form, even though nothing survives above the level of rubble fill. Loose architectural fragments, including pieces of window and door surrounds, lie within the infilled interior, largely held in place by the vegetation that has grown up around them.
