Church, Glebe By.), Co. Cork
Co. Cork |
Churches & Chapels
In the graveyard at Glebe in County Cork, there is a church that leaves no trace above ground.
No walls, no outline of foundations visible to the casual eye, no architectural fragment to suggest what once stood here. The site is recorded, but the building itself has effectively vanished, absorbed back into the landscape of its own burial ground.
By 1695, the church was already in poor repair, a detail noted by Brady in his historical account of Irish ecclesiastical buildings. That date places it within a period of considerable disruption for Church of Ireland parishes across the country, when many older medieval structures were either falling into neglect or being replaced entirely. At Glebe, replacement eventually came in the form of a Church of Ireland building that now stands within the same yard, a later structure occupying ground that the earlier church once shared. The two buildings belong to different centuries and different phases of religious life in the area, though only one of them remains to be seen.