Church, Monacnapa, Co. Cork
Co. Cork |
Churches & Chapels
A Church of Ireland parish church that was physically uprooted and replanted is not something you encounter every day.
The Garrycloyne parish church at Monacnapa, on rising ground above Blarney village in County Cork, was relocated in 1766 from its earlier site at Knocknalyre to its present position, and completed around 1775. It is the kind of institutional upheaval that tends to leave little trace in the landscape, yet the building that resulted is a quietly considered piece of late Georgian ecclesiastical architecture, subsequently altered in 1835 when the chancel was remodelled internally as an apse, giving the east end a curved, semi-circular interior that contrasts with the otherwise angular geometry of the plan.
The church is cruciform in layout, meaning it takes the form of a cross, with a rectangular nave running east to west and transepts projecting from the north and south walls at the midpoint. The entrance porch, transepts, and chancel are each gable-ended and finished with pediments above shallow Doric pilasters at the corners, a restrained classical vocabulary that was fashionable for Protestant church-building in Ireland during this period. The nave corners have heavy quoins, the large dressed stones that emphasise structural edges, and the walls throughout are rendered. Inside, a flat plastered ceiling and wooden galleries with neo-classical detailing give the space a composed, unfussy quality. The gallery in the north transept had its own separate entrance and was reserved for the Colthurst family, the local gentry associated with nearby Blarney Castle, a arrangement that was commonplace in established Church parishes of the era, where prominent families often held designated pews or enclosed spaces as a mark of social standing. A bellcote sits atop the entrance porch, and the nave walls of the projecting elements carry blind round-headed niches with cut-stone surrounds, decorative recesses that hold no statuary but add a degree of formal rhythm to the exterior. The churchyard holds burials from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
