Church, Kill, Co. Cork
Co. Cork |
Churches & Chapels
A church that stood for only twenty-seven years leaves an unusual kind of trace.
In a pasture north of the road at Kill in County Cork, low rectangular foundations are all that remain of a Church of Ireland building that was consecrated in 1844 and dismantled by 1871, its interior now infilled to the level of the surviving walls, its southwest corner the clearest point of reference in an otherwise overgrown outline. The walls, where they can still be read, measure roughly sixteen metres along the northeast to southwest axis and just over nine metres across, with a thickness of about half a metre.
The building was consecrated under the name of St James and served as the Church of Ireland parish church of Knockavilly, according to Brady's 1863 account. Why it was dismantled so soon after construction is not recorded, but the brevity of its use gives the site a slightly puzzling quality. It was not, in any case, the first Protestant place of worship on the townland. An earlier Church of Ireland church, itself built on the site of the medieval parish church of Knockavilly, stands approximately four hundred metres to the northwest in the same townland, suggesting a landscape that accumulated layers of religious use over centuries. A possible burial ground lies about sixty metres to the northwest of the 1844 foundations, adding further depth to what at first glance appears to be an unremarkable field.