Church, Marshalstown, Co. Cork

Co. Cork |

Churches & Chapels

Church, Marshalstown, Co. Cork

What makes this graveyard at Marshalstown quietly arresting is the layering of two distinct phases of Christian worship, one resting almost directly against the other.

The roofless shell of a Church of Ireland parish church, built in 1830, stands on the northern side of the graveyard, and immediately to its south lie the earlier remains of a medieval church. Two abandoned buildings, centuries apart in origin, occupying the same small ground.

The 1830 structure was designed to accommodate 150 people, a modest congregation even by rural Irish standards of the period. Constructed from roughly coursed sandstone with cut stone detailing, it follows a rectangular plan oriented roughly west-southwest to east-northeast. The south wall carries three pointed windows fitted with hood mouldings, the kind of projecting drip-course carved above an opening to throw rainwater clear of the stonework; the central window is noticeably larger than the two flanking it. Two further windows sit in the north wall. At the eastern end of that same north wall is a small vestry, and on the west gable rises a tall two-storey tower with corner buttresses and a flat-headed door opening, also with a hood moulding, set into its south face. The building is now roofless, its dressed stonework open to the sky.

The presence of the medieval church immediately to the south suggests this was an established place of worship long before the nineteenth-century structure was raised beside it. That pattern, of a post-Reformation or later church built in close proximity to an older ruin on the same site, is not uncommon in Ireland, where continuity of sacred ground often outlasted continuity of congregation or creed. At Marshalstown, the two ruins sit close enough together that the decision to build where they did in 1830 was almost certainly deliberate, a new parish church planted at the edge of something much older.

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, Marshalstown, Co. Cork. 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