Church, Baile Iarthach Thuaidh, Co. Cork
Co. Cork |
Churches & Chapels
The most quietly telling detail in this small ruined church in Baile Iarthach Thuaidh is a single window.
Set into the east gable, it carries an unusual foil or drop carved into its centre, a decorative flourish that marks it out from the plain utility of most rural medieval churches in West Cork. The building is modest by any measure, a rectangle just under fifteen metres long and not quite six metres wide, yet whoever commissioned that window wanted something a little more considered than the bare minimum.
The walls of the east gable and the north and south sides still stand to close to their original height of around 1.8 metres, giving a reasonable impression of the structure's proportions, though the upper part of the west gable has gone. A round-arched doorway survives near the west end of the south wall, and a lintelled window sits near the east end of the same wall. Aumbries, small recessed cupboards set into the wall, appear in both the north and south walls close to the east gable; these would have been used to store liturgical vessels or sacred objects during services. The church was already in ruins by 1693, as recorded by Webster, and R. Cochrane noted the distinctive east window in 1912, which suggests the building has been attracting at least occasional scholarly attention for over a century without ever quite becoming well known. It sits within a graveyard, which likely continued in use long after the church itself fell out of service, a common enough pattern in rural Ireland where the ground remained consecrated even after the walls gave way.