Church, Kill, Co. Cork

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Churches & Chapels

Church, Kill, Co. Cork

In a graveyard just north of the village of Kill in County Cork, most of what was once the parish church of Knockavilly has disappeared into the ground.

The rectangular structure, which measured roughly twenty metres east to west and just over eight metres north to south, now survives chiefly as sod-covered foundations, a repaired length of south wall, and the stump of a south-west corner. What does remain upright is the east gable, which still stands close to its original height, though the window at its centre has lost its light surround and ingoings, the dressed stonework that would have framed and lined the opening. Projecting from the inner wall face just north of that window is a small flat rectangular stone, modest in size, its purpose now uncertain.

The church served the parish of Knockavilly, and a record from 1639 places it as still in repair at that date, a detail noted by Brady in the nineteenth century. It appears, however, to have fallen out of use not long after that, which would account for the state of the fabric today. The interior, rather than remaining an empty shell, has been given over to burial, the ground within the old walls densely occupied by graves. Most are marked by low, uninscribed stones, the kind that were common when the cost or custom of carved headstones was out of reach. The earliest inscribed headstone observed here carries the date 1791, though a researcher named Hartnett, writing in 1939, recorded one dated 1757, suggesting the graveyard was already well established by the mid-eighteenth century even as the church itself lay in ruin.

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