Church (in ruins), Killimor And Boleybeg, Co. Galway

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Church (in ruins), Killimor And Boleybeg, Co. Galway

About 700 metres west-northwest of Killimor village in County Galway, a ruined medieval church sits within a graveyard with a quiet distinction that is easy to overlook.

When nineteenth-century Ordnance Survey correspondents recorded it, they described it as the largest parish church of its period in Ireland, measuring some 75 feet long and 18 feet broad. That claim alone makes it an unusual presence in the east Galway landscape, yet it receives little of the attention given to more celebrated ruins elsewhere in the county.

What remains today is the east gable, sections of the north and south side-walls, and a free-standing west gable. The stonework of that west gable shows a visible difference in masonry between two sections, suggesting the church was built or significantly altered in at least two phases. The east gable retains a two-light cusped tracery window and a quatrefoil, the kind of decorative stone carving, in which a four-lobed shape is cut through the stonework, that became common in later medieval Irish church architecture. A two-light mullioned window survives in the north wall, while the corresponding opening in the south wall has been robbed out, its stone carried away for use elsewhere, a fate common to rural ruins across Ireland. Internally, a division near the west end of the north wall points to the former presence of a chancel, the enclosed eastern section of a church typically reserved for clergy, measuring roughly 6.8 metres long and 5.1 metres wide. A small rectangular window in the west gable hints that a loft once occupied that end of the building. Attached to the south side of the church there was once a separate chapel known as Séipéal Uí Mhaoilcheir, built by the family of that name as their own place of burial. By 1838 it had been completely demolished, and nothing of it remains visible above ground. A holy well lies roughly 45 metres to the northeast of the church, and a cross stands about 75 metres to the east, suggesting this was once a more extensive sacred complex than the remaining walls alone would indicate.

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