Church in ruins, Kilmartin, Co. Wicklow

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Churches & Chapels

Church in ruins, Kilmartin, Co. Wicklow

On a west-facing slope in County Wicklow, looking out over a broad valley, a small roofless church holds its ground with more interior detail intact than many ruins of its kind.

The building is rectangular, roughly fourteen metres by eight, and what makes it quietly remarkable is what survives inside: a subrectangular granite font, used historically for baptisms, and a holy water stoup set into the northeast corner. These are the kinds of liturgical fittings that tend to disappear from abandoned churches, carried off, broken up, or simply lost to weather and neglect over the centuries.

The walls still carry readable architectural features. The doorway in the south wall is splayed, meaning it is wider on the interior than the exterior, a common medieval technique that drew more light inward and gave the entrance a sense of depth. The opening narrows from just over a metre wide inside to seventy-five centimetres at the outer face. A splayed window sits towards the eastern end of the north wall, following a similar logic. The font itself is a substantial piece, measuring roughly seventy-five centimetres by forty-seven, and cut from granite. The holy water stoup in the corner is smaller but equally deliberate in its placement, positioned near what would have been a point of entry or regular movement through the space. The site is protected under the National Monuments Acts, with a preservation order dating to 1940.

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