Church, Kilcounty, Co. Cork

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Church, Kilcounty, Co. Cork

In a graveyard to the west of Kilcounty, a low rectangle of overgrown masonry marks the outline of what was once the parish church of Dangandonovan.

The walls survive to a maximum height of 1.75 metres, their surfaces thick with vegetation, and the building they once enclosed measured roughly 17 metres east to west and 8 metres north to south. A gap near the western end of the south wall is thought to indicate where the original doorway stood, though the surrounding growth makes the detail easy to miss.

The church is known to have served the parish of Dangandonovan, a place-name that has since receded from common use. At some point after the building fell out of liturgical use, its interior was given over to burial, and three 18th-century headstones survive within the walls. The earliest of these is dated 1744 or 1745, a detail recorded by Henchion in 1974. The practice of burying within a ruined church enclosure was not unusual in Ireland; the walls, even when roofless and crumbling, carried a sense of consecrated ground that communities were reluctant to abandon entirely.

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Pete F
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