Church, Moorgagagh, Co. Mayo

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Church, Moorgagagh, Co. Mayo

In a field in Moorgagagh, County Mayo, a church has been slowly returning to the earth.

Most of its walls have collapsed and are now little more than low, sod-covered ridges, barely knee-height, tracing the outline of a subrectangular building roughly eight metres from north to south and eighteen metres east to west. What keeps the structure from disappearing entirely into the pasture is a single surviving section of the south wall, which still stands to a height of just over three metres and retains a small window opening, roughly two-thirds of a metre in each dimension, through which light and wind still pass. It is the kind of ruin that rewards close attention; from a distance it can look like little more than a rise in the ground.

The church sits in pastureland approximately 120 metres west of a nearby abbey, suggesting this was once a site of some ecclesiastical significance, with more than one religious structure occupying the same general area. A low internal wall running north to south divides the interior of the church in two, with the larger portion to the east. This kind of internal division is not unusual in medieval Irish churches, sometimes reflecting a separation between nave and chancel, or accommodating different functions within a single building. The survey of Ballinrobe and its surrounding district, compiled by D. Lavelle and published in 1994 by the Lough Mask and Lough Carra Tourist Development Association, records the structure as it then appeared, though the collapsed walls and encroaching vegetation suggest the site has been deteriorating for a very long time.

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Pete F
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