Church, Ballyconnell, Co. Kerry

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Churches & Chapels

Church, Ballyconnell, Co. Kerry

At the centre of the village of Kilflynn in County Kerry, a Protestant church built in 1811 occupies a site where, in all likelihood, people have gathered for Christian worship since the early seventh century.

Nothing of the original structure survives above ground. What remains is a name, Cill Floinn, meaning the church of Saint Flann, and a graveyard on sloping ground where Catholic and Protestant burials lie side by side.

Saint Flann himself is a figure of near-total historical obscurity. His feast day is unrecorded, and no reliable biographical detail survives. What does persist is legend. About 0.7 kilometres to the northeast, in the townland of Cloonnafinnela, lies Toberflyn, a holy well dedicated to the saint. According to tradition, Flann became blind in old age but chose not to seek a cure for himself; instead he gave the well the power to heal blindness in others. The well was visited on May Eve, and the folklorist Ó Danachair noted in 1958 that it retained a reputation for curing sore eyes. Formerly, rags were left there as votive offerings, a practice common at many Irish holy wells. Some stones near the well are said to mark the remains of Flann's hermitage. The church itself appears in the taxation records of 1302, listed as Killaquyn in the Offlannan deanery, valued at 13 shillings and 4 pence for tithes, though there is disagreement among historians as to whether this entry refers to Kilflynn or to another site altogether. By 1756, Charles Smith recorded it as a vicarial church whose patron was the Earl of Orrery. The current building dates from 1811, with a bell tower added in 1840. It was restored between 1990 and 1993 and now serves as a community hall.

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