Church, Killoughane, Co. Kerry

Co. Kerry |

Churches & Chapels

Church, Killoughane, Co. Kerry

Behind a modern bungalow in Killoughane, on the Iveragh Peninsula in County Kerry, a short stretch of ivy-covered wall is just about all that remains of a medieval parish church.

At 3.5 metres long and 3 metres high, it is barely a fragment, rubble-built and bonded with sandy mortar. A rough corbel, a stone bracket projecting from the inner face of the wall about 2.2 metres above ground, hints at the more complete structure that once stood here, its rectangular nave aligned east to west in the manner typical of early Irish churches. What makes the site quietly unsettling is not just its diminished state but the layered losses surrounding it: stone foundations uncovered by digging on the north and east sides in the 1970s were not preserved but removed, and a children's burial ground that once lay on the south side of the church was levelled in the 1920s. Children's burial grounds of this kind, sometimes called cillíní, were traditionally used for unbaptised infants and others denied burial in consecrated ground; their erasure from the landscape was not uncommon in the twentieth century, though it was rarely without consequence for local memory.

The church itself, known in Irish as Cill Lócháin, appears in the Papal Taxation Lists of 1302 to 1306, placing it firmly within the medieval ecclesiastical network of the region. The scholar Ó Cíobháin suggested that it was effectively sidelined by the early fifteenth century, losing ground to the nearby Knocknane Church at Churchtown. By that point it had been dependent on the Macgillycuddy tower house at Dromloughane, a connection noted by the topographer Samuel Lewis as late as 1837. The Macgillycuddys were a powerful Gaelic family in this part of Kerry, and the church's subordination to their tower house speaks to the way religious and secular authority were often tightly entangled in late medieval Ireland. Ordnance Survey maps record it as a recognisable rectangular structure, which makes the current fragment, most likely a portion of the southern side-wall, easier to place within the outline of what once existed.

Rated 0 out of 5

Visitor Notes

Review type for post source and places source type not found
Added by
Picture of Pete F
Pete F
IrishHistory.com is passionate about helping people discover and connect with the rich stories of their local communities.
Please use the form below to submit any photos you may have of Church, Killoughane, Co. Kerry. We're happy to take any suggested edits you may have too. Please be advised it will take us some time to get to these submissions. Thank you.
Name
Email
Message
Upload images/documents
Maximum file size: 100 MB
If you'd like to add an image or a PDF please do it here.

Advertisement