Church, Glenmore East, Co. Limerick

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Church, Glenmore East, Co. Limerick

A single violent storm in 1839 did more damage to this late-medieval church in County Limerick than centuries of gradual neglect had managed.

What the "great gale" of that year left behind is a fragmentary, ivy-clad shell: the south and west walls still stand to something approaching their original height, but the north wall has been reduced to foundation level, and the east wall is now little more than a pile of rubble.

The building, recorded in the Ordnance Survey Letters as the parish church of Glenmore or Strand, carries the Irish name Teampull na h-Inghine Baoith, meaning the church of the daughter of Baoith, suggesting a foundation with early ecclesiastical associations, though the surviving fabric is late-medieval in character. The antiquarian T. J. Westropp noted the site in 1904 to 1905. The church is a fairly substantial rectangle, measuring 24 metres east to west and 6.3 metres north to south. Several architectural details survive along the south wall. Near its western end there is a doorway, once covered by a wicker-centred arch, a type of arch formed around a woven timber frame; the jambs of the door surround remain in place, though the arch itself has fallen. Further along the same wall there are two windows, one a simple slit opening now missing its light, the other a square-set embrasure that has lost both its top and its surrounding stonework. Just east of that second window sits a partially collapsed aumbry, a small wall recess typically used in a liturgical context for storing sacred vessels, measuring roughly 72 centimetres wide and 54 centimetres deep.

The ruins sit within the north-west quadrant of a broader enclosure. Ivy covers much of the remaining masonry, which makes reading the wall surfaces difficult up close but gives the site a particular quality of deep-rooted abandonment. Visitors looking carefully along the south wall will find that the sequence of doorway, windows, and aumbry is still legible despite the losses, and the surviving jambs of the doorway reward close inspection. The site is not a managed heritage property, so access conditions and ground-level vegetation will vary depending on the season.

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